Republic of Armenia Public Expenditure Review : Expanding the Fiscal Envelope
Armenia's small revenue and spending envelopes limit the government's ability to influence the economy, even while its influence through laws, rules, and regulations is significant. The government has an important role to play to reduce p...
Main Author: | |
---|---|
Format: | Public Expenditure Review |
Language: | English en_US |
Published: |
Washington, DC
2015
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/05/23014560/armenia-public-expenditure-review-expanding-fiscal-envelope http://hdl.handle.net/10986/21063 |
Summary: | Armenia's small revenue and spending
envelopes limit the government's ability to influence
the economy, even while its influence through laws, rules,
and regulations is significant. The government has an
important role to play to reduce poverty and boost shared
prosperity, and needs fiscal space. This public expenditure
review (PER) analyzes and provides recommendations for the
different dimensions of expanding the fiscal envelope. There
are three ways of creating fiscal space: the first is higher
tax revenue mobilization (through better administration and
enforcement of existing taxes, higher tax rates, or new
taxes on previously untaxed goods and services or incomes),
second, lower spending on less productive programs, and
third, an increase in the effectiveness of spending, that
is, a higher output of the things the government wants
(efficient administration, human capital, services for the
population) for a given level of spending. The report
highlights Armeniaapos;s limited fiscal envelope, and points
out that key areas, such as education, health, and road
transport, had been consistently underfunded. It suggests
that revenue needs to be significantly improved, and the
government will have to revisit its expenditure priorities
to create the spending headroom needed to at least maintain
the spending level in these areas. The structure of the
report is presented as follows: section one gives executive
summary. Section two focuses on quantifying fiscal
activities. Section three analyzes a number of tax
exemptions and loopholes. Section four analyzes ways to
improve the impact out of every Armenian dram raised and
spent. Section five evaluates in detail the social
protection system's performance. Section six accompanies
the reforms of Armenia's public service remuneration system. |
---|