By Patty Magubira, ARUSHA Tanzania
The East African
Community has rolled out home-grown guidelines for government finance and
public sector data statistics as the bloc sets the foundation for a Monetary
Union. The guidelines were developed in collaboration with the International
Monetary Fund.
EAC deputy Secretary
General in charge of Planning and Infrastructure Steven Mlote officiated the
roll out in Arusha on Monday.
He said the guidelines
will help in compiling quality and comparable statistics at both the regional
and international level.
The Monetary Union
calls for a strong fiscal co-ordination and converged macro-economic base, and
thus the guidelines require partner states to maintain fiscal deficit,
including grants at below three per cent of GDP, tax revenues at 25 per cent of
GDP and public debt in net present value at below 50 per cent of GDP.
“It’s prudent that
these indicators are compiled using common methodology and similar practices if
we’re to maintain a sound Monetary Union,” said Mr Mlote.
The guidelines will be
applied in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda and South Sudan. Burundi is still
tied to a similar system for French speaking countries.
This is the second time
the EAC partner states have developed guidelines with technical support from
the IMF wing dubbed East Africa Regional Technical Assistance Centre.
The first phase
guidelines of 2014 outlined public sectorisation and social insurance schemes,
and classifying revenue and treatment of grants.
“There has been a
tremendous improvement in the quality of fiscal data among the EAC partner
states, especially on expanding coverage from budgetary central government to
general government and finally to the public sector, including state-owned
enterprises,” said Mr Mlote, adding that the guidelines are based on those by
the European Union for the euro system of national and regional accounts.
“Of utmost importance
at this stage is for the partner states to develop and agree on sets of tools
that will facilitate monitoring implementation of the guidelines to ensure full
compliance,” Mr Mlote said.
However, Rainer
Koehler, the IMF GFS division chief, division of statistics department,
cautioned that the implementation of the guidelines was often more complex,
complicated and challenging than just developing the standards. – The
East African
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