Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Is the DRC fiscal surplus really good news…?


The Central Bank of Congo has published on its website (www.bcc.cd) the figures related to the country Public Finances. The first observation is that no currency is mentioned! Therefore we are assuming they are talking about millions of Congolese francs.

At first glance, the result looks 'fantastic' with the State generating a surplus of CDF 164m (approximately USD 180k). This is good news for a country known for poor public finance management. However, we need to look at the figures closer to have a better appreciation of what happened in 2013.

On the revenues sides the government has only managed to reach 55% of its budget. This is a poor performance. The question is whether the budgeting exercise was poorly done (which I suspect) or the government did not managed to collect as much as they anticipated which I doubt as the data (Central Bank -to be discussed soon) show a significant increase in the national output.

The direct consequence is that the government expenditures were 48% below budget. You can ask me:" where is the problem as they have managed to maintain a surplus?"

The problem is that the government only paid 11% of what it was supposed to pay to State local suppliers!!! This has terrible repercussions on these companies that have provided a service to the State without being paid. The consequence for some of them was to lay-off employees and close doors...

As a result, the 'prudent' fiscal approach of the government has had negative consequences on local SME activities.

The question we can ask ourselves is whether or not the government would have achieved such good performance in term of inflation and forex stability if they had made all those payments...

3 comments:

JSM said...

100% in line with your view... I may also add, even in the revenu side, this is not reflecting neither the real activity nor the potential... So, the performance is definitely poor... The consequences in social life and in dpeth development perspective are worsen as we can see...
One mitigation however: we came from far indeed...

Saluseke said...

Just a quick question,..., where did you get the data specifying the 10% of paid local suppliers. Is there such a data compiled providing information on whom the DRC gov is doing business with?

Herve Otschudi said...

Hi Saluseke, just check the ' condense hebdomadaire d'information statistiques ' from the central bank website www.bcc.cd

Discussion sur le secteur bancaire avec Bob Nzoimbengene, Partner chez Deloitte.

Une fois n’est pas coutume, l’analyse du secteur bancaire sera faite cette fois-ci par un ancien banquier. J’ai le plaisir d’accueillir mon ...