General Question (a)

How many emergency fiscal policy packages were introduced by the government in your country in response to the COVID-19 crisis? When were they approved, and what form did they take?

Guidelines
The researcher should list the emergency fiscal policy packages that were introduced by the government between 1 March and 30 September 2020, and provide a link to documents and information about each package (if published online) as well as the date each package was introduced (i.e. adopted by the executive or approved by the legislature).

The researcher should indicate, for each package listed, whether it was introduced as a supplementary budget, other specific legislation, a government decree or executive action, or any other policy or regulatory instrument (indicate which).

The researcher should also indicate if specific fiscal policy measures were introduced as part of the regular annual budget process, in case a new annual budget was approved between 1 March and 30 September 2020.

Researchers should also provide some general details on background and content for each of them. Links to official government sources and media coverage should be provided as supporting evidence.

For example, in the period under consideration, Nigeria introduced a revised budget in June, while Indonesia introduced three Presidential Orders/Regulations between March and June, and included additional measures in the 2021 budget, approved at the end of September. For a general summary of government policy responses to COVID-19 across countries that can be used as reference, see the IMF Policy Tracker (scroll down or use letter links to look for individual countries, then look for “Key Policy Responses”—FISCAL).

Cut-off date for the introduction of the emergency fiscal policy package
We are assessing packages introduced between 1 March 2020 and 30 September 2020. This means that if a package was introduced before 30 September 2020, but the relevant documents were published after 30 September 2020 but before 31 December 2020, the package qualifies for the COVID module assessment.

Additionally, to qualify for the COVID module, supplementary budgets should be introduced and approved before 30 September 2020.

Extension of packages
In some countries such as Malaysia, the policies and programs introduced in an initial package have been extended in a subsequent package. For the purposes of the module, we can treat the initial package and its extension as a single package.

How to define a package
In many countries, governments’ response to COVID has not been neatly bundled into a package that has been introduced as a single executive decree or supplementary budget. Instead, over the span of a few weeks, governments issued a series of decrees or perhaps a combination of a supplementary budget and an executive decree(s). In these instances, we can use certain guiding principles to help us define the package that will be assessed for the COVID module. For example, if the government issued a press release, or a few press releases over a discrete time frame (e.g., a few weeks), the measures announced in these statements could be treated as one package. In the absence of a formal announcement, emergency measures introduced over a discrete time frame (e.g., a few weeks) could be considered together as a single package. In these instances, we will need to use our and our researchers’ best judgement.

Assessing measures introduced by central banks
Per the COVID module guidelines, the module does not cover policy responses using monetary policy. In practice, this means that measures introduced by central banks such as cutting interest rates, debt moratoriums, etc., should not be considered as part of the EFPP. There is, however, one exception: in instances where the executive reimbursed the Central Bank for the cost of implementing the policies and their cost shows up on the budget, the polices could be considered fiscal policies. (For instance, in the US, the government provided the Fed with funds so that it could make riskier loans than it would otherwise make.)