1. AN INVESTMENT CASE FOR FISCAL SPACE FOR SOCIAL PROTECTION SOME GLOBAL EVIDENCE AND PRACTICES USHA MISHRA, CHIEF SOCIAL POLICY AND ADVOCACY, UNICEF CAMBODIA

2. DEFINITION Fiscal space can be defined as the ‘room in a government’s budget that allows it to provide resources for a desired purpose without jeopardizing the sustainability of its financial position or the stability of the economy- UNICEF and ODI briefing paper, 2009

3. Evidence for SP as an investment

9. Strategies for creating fiscal space

10. SIX POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS Increasing revenue through either increased economic activity or increases in the average tax yield as a proportion of GDP; Reallocating spending from lesser to higher priorities and from lesser to more effective and productive programmes; Reducing debt by writing off all or part of a country’s debt stock with a view to freeing up resources that would otherwise be spent on meeting debt service obligations;

11. Increasing borrowing from either external or domestic sources; Increasing aid in the form of grants and concessional loans; and Seignorage, or generating revenue by money creation/printing money.

12. HOW MUCH WILL IT COST

13. SOME ISSUES FOR CAMBODIA 8% discretionary/non-allocated (2010) Expenditures in non-priority ministries increased at a higher rate (NGO forum 2010) Five out of eight ministries that have been labeled priority in the past are receiving a less-than-average increase for their recurrent budgets

14. SOME ISSUES FOR CAMBODIA Defense and Security sector and General Administration(GA) sector overspent their allocated recurrent budget and the percentage are much higher than economic and social sectors (2009). Within GA, large bulk of increases from non-priority Office of Council of Ministers (206.4%), Ministry of Interior-General Administration (155%) and National Election Committee (172.3%); from the Unexpected Expenditure/Reserved Expenditure, a patters true over the past five years Tax administration reforms (0.1 percent tax)

15. OPPORTUNITIES Ongoing Public Finance Management Reforms an opportunity UNICEF’s recent initiative in strengthening social budget planning/child friendly budgeting) Extractive industries-oil revenues? ( 1-2% of the GDP?)

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