COVID Module Question 7

Do published documents or information on the emergency fiscal policy package under consideration include information on intended beneficiaries of spending measures, in particular poor and vulnerable groups?

Guidelines
This question asks whether published documents or information on the emergency fiscal policy package include information on the intended beneficiaries of spending measures. This can include different categories of individuals (e.g. informal workers, female heads of households, etc.) and different categories of businesses (e.g. small, large, within specific sectors, etc.). It also puts a particular emphasis on whether policies are designed to reduce hardship a country’s poor and vulnerable groups are facing as a result of the pandemic and its economic effects. Vulnerable beneficiaries can be defined on the basis of their low income, or by some other characteristic that makes them particularly exposed to the negative impacts of the pandemic (specific racial or ethnic groups, informal workers, slum dwellers, etc.) (Note that question 8 asks specifically about information by gender.)

In addition to identifying the intended beneficiaries of a spending measure, it asks whether information is provided explaining the eligibility criteria for different types of benefits.

Finally, the question asks whether the presentation includes a narrative discussion of how the policy is intended to assist intended beneficiaries, particularly the poor and vulnerable.

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.''


 * ☐  Individual beneficiaries
 * ☐  Business beneficiaries
 * ☐  Poor beneficiaries
 * ☐  Other vulnerable beneficiaries (please specify in the comments box)
 * ☐  Eligibility criteria
 * ☐  Explanatory narrative
 * ☐  None of the above

1) 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.

2) How much disaggregation/ specificity is needed for these questions?
In Saudi Arabia, there is some language that the primary recipients of certain support packages in question are enterprises, certain consumers and sectors, and transport workers, but the specificity does not go much further than that (for example, it mentions specific sectors but not the names of enterprises in such sectors; it mentions transport workers, but not much more specificity than that). This answer suffices.