Macroeconomic and Fiscal Reform
![photo, A think tank in Serbia aims to show how economic trends can affect the public's daily lives.](images/serbia_eco_trends_300.jpg) |
Re-engaging the Public on Policy Issues
A think tank in Serbia aims to show how economic trends can affect the public's daily lives. Staff from the Center for Advanced Economic Studies pull together input for its next Quarterly Monitor.
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Through its overseas missions, USAID offers support and technical leadership for macroeconomic and fiscal reform and economic governance in order to support rapid, sustainable, and equitable economic growth in developing countries. USAID support includes:
- Analyzing situations of concern, diagnosing problems, and initiating the resolution process
- Identifying best practices and developing toolkits and guidelines, including technical briefs for USAID officers in the field to assess, design, review, and evaluate fiscal policy programs
- Organizing seminars, workshops, and training sessions related to fiscal reform and economic governance for USAID-assisted country officials
- Initiating quick-response field support to strengthen local capacity for fiscal management and sound economic governance
USAID’s experts perform design, assessment, and evaluation activities, as well as short-term technical advisory services. Activities have included:
- Designing southern Sudan’s nascent Ministry of Finance
- Recommending reforms to India’s intergovernmental fiscal relations
- Capacity building in Vietnam to forecast the revenue impacts of tax reforms and free trade agreements
- Designing and prioritizing a tax administration program for Armenia
- Providing policy analysis to support a major income tax reform in Jordan
- Providing technical assistance to design program components for Millennium Challenge Corporation Threshold proposals for Guyana, Paraguay, Moldova, and São Tomé e Príncipe
Many countries where USAID operates lack the institutional capacity to maintain the stable and sustainable monetary and exchange market conditions that encourage private investment and economic growth. USAID assists central banks in some of these countries to improve their institutional capacity. For example, in Kosovo and Afghanistan USAID provided resident advisors to help train a cadre of local professionals and build critical fiscal institutions, like tax and pension systems.
To support efforts to help developing countries implement sound fiscal reforms, USAID developed the Web site www.fiscalreform.net as the gateway to information, practical research, and literature related to fiscal reform and economic governance. The Web site features practical tools including best practices notes, USAID case studies and success stories; a global database for benchmarking countries’ tax-system performance; and an extensive electronic library containing literature on a variety of relevant topics.
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