COVID Module Question 10

Do published documents or information on the emergency fiscal policy package under consideration include information on domestic sources of financing (excluding borrowing) that will be used for specific policy initiatives?

Guidelines
As governments increased spending to face the pandemic, they also had to think about how to finance such additional expenditure.

This question looks at what information is available about how the interventions included in the emergency fiscal policy packages were financed.

While for many governments borrowing was the main source of financing (see next question), other available options include: (a) budget reprioritization—reallocating resources from lower priority programs and activities to emergency response; (b) using contingency reserves that were set aside in the original budget for emergency situations; (c) introducing new revenue measures to generate additional resources; (d) other possible financing such as proceeds from sale of assets, transfers from State-Owned Enterprises, etc.

Example: South Africa’s Economic Response Document (see Table 3) and Supplementary Budget Summary

Tick boxes: ''Please check the boxes of the items that appear in the relevant documentation. If none of the items are presented, please check ‘None of the Above’. In the comment box, please provide a detailed citation for each item selected below as described in the assessment directions as well as any additional details.''


 * ☐  Budget reallocations
 * ☐  Contingency reserves
 * ☐  Additional government revenues
 * ☐  Other (specify)
 * ☐  Explanatory narrative
 * ☐  None of the above

1) Distinguishing between Questions 6, 10 and 13
Element's of Turkey's COVID-19 relief package were financed in a variety of ways: The Treasury-backed Credit Guarantee Fund guaranteed loans to businesses and individuals; citizens used its regular Unemployment Fund (which functions like a social security fund - individuals make regular contributions to the fund and can withdraw in cases of unemployment); and a fund was established as part of the National Solidarity Campaign to collect domestic donations from agencies, banks, individuals and others.

However, we did not assess any of these in Question 10 on domestic sources of financing for specific policy initiative.

Since the Credit Guarantee Fund and Unemployment Fund were doing what they were doing before (providing loan guarantees and unemployment insurance), but as part of the COVID response, we assessed them, respectively, in Question 6 on loan guarantees and liabilities and in Question 13 on extra-budgetary funds. (Note: If the two funds had simply transferred resources to the Treasury, and the Treasury had then used them to finance COVID-19 related spending, this arrangement could have been addressed in Question 10 and indicated as "Other".)

Meanwhile, we also assessed the National Solidarity Campaign domestic donation fund in Question 13, as it appears to take the form that other extra-budgetary COVID funds financed by pooled donations in other countries are taking (see the second document in this list titled “COVID-19 Funds in Response to the Pandemic”)

2) Should researchers only reference documents produced by the executive?
No. Researchers can use any documents produced by any public entity to answer the questions, at least to start with. We can then, when analyzing the results, decide whether these "count" or not. If you have any questions or concerns regarding a particular document, please bring it to the team.