(2020-06) Statement of Motives and Macroeconomic Framework Annexed to the FY2019-2020 General Budget

This special issue of Le Moniteur (No. 8-A, Wednesday 10 June 2020) carries two annexed documents to Haiti's FY2019-2020 general budget prepared by the Ministere de l'Economie et des Finances (MEF): the Statement of Motives (Expose des motifs) and the Macroeconomic Framework Note (Cadre macroeconomique). The budget, adopted by the new government installed in March 2020 in the absence of a functioning parliament, balances resources and expenditures at 198,700,000,000 gourdes, a 36.4% increase over the reconducted 2017-2018 rectified budget used in 2018-2019 (145,643,000,000 gourdes). Internal resources total 89,339,870,695 gourdes; external partner support totals 37,069,658,982 gourdes (17,959,108,982 in budget support and 19,110,550,000 in project grants/loans); and 72,190,470,323 gourdes come from public securities issuance (25,771,020,323) and BRH borrowing (30,180,000,000). The public deficit (excluding budget support and grants) is set to rise from 3.5% of GDP in 2018-2019 to 6.2% in 2019-2020, driven by the explicit inclusion of Electricite d'Haiti and petroleum subsidies. Public debt service is projected at 20,104,366,777 gourdes (10,913,878,185 domestic, 9,190,488,593 external); personnel costs at 47,516,281,910 gourdes (+13.1%); current operating expenditures at 30,927,102,538 gourdes (+20.9%); and total subsidies at 38,050,350,545 gourdes, dominated by 25,698,200,000 gourdes for EDH and fuel subsidies. Public investment is set at 59,300,000,000 gourdes, including more than 17 billion gourdes for the COVID-19 response. The macroeconomic framework note revises FY2019-2020 real GDP growth sharply downward to -3.6% (from -1.8% estimated for 2018-2019, itself revised down from an initial -1.2% based on updated ICAE data), with average annual inflation projected at 22.6%, 5.3 points above 2018-2019. GDP per capita fell from USD 818 in 2014 to USD 650 in 2019. The note reviews the global and regional context (IMF WEO April 2020 projecting a -3% global contraction and -1% for emerging/developing economies), documents a 79% revenue realization rate against targets in 2018-2019 (76.4 billion gourdes collected), a public deficit of 28.4 billion gourdes on a cash basis by end-April 2020, BRH monetary financing of 27 billion gourdes (far exceeding the November 2019 MEF-BRH governance pact), a gourde depreciation of about 10% over the first seven months of the fiscal year, and net foreign reserves down 13% to USD 651 million at end-April 2020.

Le Moniteur cover dated Wednesday 10 June 2020 (Special No. 8-A); used as the publication month prefix. Read pages 1-17 of the PDF (cover, expose des motifs, and the opening sections of the macroeconomic framework note); the document continues beyond page 17 with further macroeconomic and medium-term sections not directly reviewed, but the summarized figures are drawn only from pages read.