COVID Module Question 11

Do published documents or information on the emergency fiscal policy package under consideration include information on borrowing needs and plans?

Guidelines
In many cases, governments had to resort to large amounts of additional borrowing to finance their COVID-19 emergency response. Providing details about borrowing needs and plans is therefore important to guarantee that the government’s overall fiscal position can be adequately monitored.

Information that governments should provide includes: (a) total (additional) borrowing needed for the rest of the fiscal year; (b) whether the government plans to raise additional borrowing domestically or externally; (c) what kinds of debt the government is planning to incur; (d) expected interest rates on these debt instruments; (e) other additional information such as maturity profile, etc.

Example: South Africa’s Supplementary Budget Review (Chapter 4)

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.''


 * ☐  Total borrowing needs
 * ☐  Domestic vs. external borrowing
 * ☐  Types of borrowing instruments
 * ☐  Interest rates
 * ☐  Other (specify)
 * ☐  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.

Also, see discussion in COVID-19 Module Questions 1 & 2. Similar to those questions, we should apply the generosity principle here and can consider information published in key budget documents to answer this question, if they are published as noted in the discussion for Questions 1 & 2.

HOWEVER, please note that the information on borrowing needs and plans (in whatever document) should be directly related to financing the additional spending from the package, and not necessarily for the whole budget.