(2016-10) Annexes to the FY2016-2017 General Budget: Statement of Motives and Macroeconomic Framework
Summary — Special issue of Le Moniteur (No. 12-A, 3 October 2016) publishing the two annex documents to Haiti's FY2016-2017 General Budget: the Statement of Motives, which sets out the budget's resource envelope, credit allocations by expenditure title, and public-investment priorities, and the Macroeconomic Framework, which reviews FY2014-2015 and FY2015-2016 economic and fiscal performance and the assumptions underpinning the new budget. Total budget resources are set at 121,945,000,000 gourdes.
Key Findings
- Total FY2016-2017 budget resources set at 121,945,000,000 gourdes, a 0.6% decline from FY2015-2016.
- FY2015-2016 growth target revised down from an initial 3.6% to 1.5%; FY2016-2017 growth projected at 2.2%.
- Gourde depreciated 18.6% against the US dollar in H1 FY2015-2016, from 52.14 to 61.76 gourdes per dollar.
- Inflation reached 15.1% year-on-year in May 2016, with local food prices up 20.4% versus 9.2% for imported food.
- Budget support fell 33.8% to 2.86 billion gourdes while non-Petro Caribe grants/loans rose 28.4% to 27.8 billion gourdes.
- Cash-basis fiscal deficit of 1.1 billion gourdes in H1 FY2015-2016, versus 3.5 billion the prior year.
Full Description
This special number of Le Moniteur (171st year, No. 12-A, Monday 3 October 2016) contains the two documents accompanying the FY2016-2017 General Budget of Haiti. The Statement of Motives (Expose des motifs) explains that the budget was prepared in a difficult sociopolitical context marked by the electoral crisis, weak growth, gourde depreciation, and shortfalls in domestic and Petro Caribe financing; it revised the FY2015-2016 growth target from 3.6% to 1.5% and sets total budget resources at 121,945,000,000 gourdes (a 0.6% decline from 2015-2016), with budget support falling 33.8% to 2.86 billion gourdes and non-Petro Caribe grants/loans rising 28.4% to 27.8 billion gourdes. It details credit allocations by expenditure title (personnel 34.52bn, goods and services 19.71bn, capital spending 32.82bn, transfers 11.13bn, debt service 11.59bn, other public expenditure 12.18bn) and lists the public investment programs financed, including direct commune financing (1.48bn gourdes at 10 million per commune) and communal-section financing via CFGDCT (530 million gourdes). It sets FY2016-2017 macro objectives: 2.2% real GDP growth, inflation contained to 10.5% average/13.5% year-end, and a 13.5% fiscal pressure target.
The Cadrage Macroeconomique (Macroeconomic Framework) reviews the international and domestic economic environment underlying the budget: global growth estimated at 3.2% in 2016 (IMF, April 2016), recession in Latin America and the Caribbean, and Haiti's own GDP growth revised down to 1.2% for FY2014-2015 (dragged by a 5.4% contraction in agriculture). It reports first-half FY2015-2016 fiscal and monetary data, including inflation reaching 15.1% year-on-year in May 2016, an 18.6% gourde depreciation against the US dollar in the first semester (52.14 to 61.76 gourdes per dollar), a cash-basis deficit of 1.1 billion gourdes, and BRH net foreign-exchange sales of 82.58 million dollars over the first eight months of the fiscal year.
Notes
Publication date taken from the Le Moniteur masthead (Special No. 12-A, Monday 3 October 2016); the budget itself covers fiscal year 2016-2017 (October 2016-September 2017). Only the front matter (Expose des motifs and start of Cadrage macroeconomique, through p.15) was read in detail; the full annex likely continues with further budgetary tables not reviewed here.