Economics & Development

Uganda stands at a critical inflection point as it prepares to enter the oil production era while pursuing its ambitious Tenfold Growth Strategy. This Public Finance Review argues that fiscal policy will be central to converting Uganda’s growth potential, youthful workforce, natural assets, and expected oil revenues into lasting gains in jobs, human capital, infrastructure, and economic diversification. The report finds that rising debt service, weak budget credibility, declining capital spending, and underinvestment in human capital and productive sectors have narrowed fiscal space. It highlights the need to strengthen the fiscal framework before oil revenues begin flowing, improve domestic revenue mobilization, and increase spending efficiency, particularly in public investment management, procurement, payroll, and arrears control. The review proposes a five-pillar reform package covering fiscal rules for the oil decade, tax base broadening, investment efficiency, a Human Capital Compact, and reorientation of spending toward public goods in agriculture, tourism, minerals, and science and technology. If implemented as a coherent package, these reforms could raise GDP, stabilize debt, reduce poverty, and generate millions of more and better jobs, ensuring that oil revenues support long-term transformation rather than short-term consumption.

Cambodia has achieved remarkable economic transformation over the past two decades, with rapid growth, falling poverty, and progress to lower-middle-income status, but Vision 2050 sets a far more ambitious goal of reaching high-income status. Achieving this will require shifting from a growth model driven by labor and capital accumulation to one based on productivity, competitive firms, skilled workers, and stronger fiscal capacity. Firms must overcome constraints such as high input costs, informality, and regulatory barriers, while deeper trade integration is needed to drive value addition and job creation. At the same time, strengthening education and skills systems is essential to break the low-skill equilibrium and support higher productivity employment. Expanding fiscal capacity through broader tax bases and stronger administration will finance investments in human capital, infrastructure, and social protection. The report emphasizes that only bold, coordinated reforms implemented in parallel can deliver sustained growth, better jobs, and successful realization of Vision 2050.

Guinea Domestic Revenue Mobilization and Public Expenditure Management for Guinea has the development objectives to improve domestic revenue mobilization, public expenditure, and debt management. Component 1: Domestic Revenue Mobilization strengthens policy and administration to broaden the tax base, raise compliance, and improve mining revenue governance, through Sub-components: Tax Policy, which supports a Medium-Term Revenue Strategy, a tax expenditure registry and reporting, alignment of excise regimes, and introduction of a pilot carbon pricing instrument for the bauxite sector; Revenue Administration, which upgrades and integrates core systems to enable a reliable taxpayer registry, secure e-filing and e-payment, risk-based compliance and audit, improved taxpayer services and grievance redress, enhanced customs selectivity and post-clearance audit with interoperability between customs and tax systems, stronger valuation and control of mineral exports, and consolidation and digital collection of non-tax revenues with better oversight of state assets and state-owned enterprises; Natural Resource Management, which operationalizes an inter-ministerial mining revenue task force, builds an inter-agency data platform for real-time fiscal and production information, launches a rolling transfer pricing audit program for multinationals, supports Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative processes, and develops governance for a sovereign fund focused on stabilization; and National Accounts, Real Sector, and Spatial Statistics, which institutionalizes fiscal incidence analysis using improved administrative and survey data to inform equitable tax and spending policy. Component 2: Public Financial Management improves credibility, transparency, and efficiency of spending and investment, through Sub-components: Public Expenditure Management, which operationalizes a medium-term fiscal framework and sectoral expenditure frameworks, advances program-based budgeting, deploys a budget transparency portal, strengthens internal control and audit, modernizes treasury operations including commitment control and digital payments, and introduces annual fiscal risk statements with disclosure of contingent liabilities; Public Investment Management, which enforces mandatory appraisal gates with climate and greenhouse gas screening, integrates capital spending by public bodies and state-owned enterprises, upgrades the integrated public investment management system for lifecycle tracking, and strengthens the policy and capacity framework for public-private partnerships; Public Procurement, which scales an e-procurement platform, enhances transparency and oversight, establishes a national procurement observatory, and builds capacity for faster, more competitive tendering; and Government Finance and Administrative Data, which completes operationalization of the integrated accounting system and improves interoperability and quality of government finance statistics aligned with international standards. Component 3: Debt Management enhances sustainable borrowing and transparency, through Sub-components: Debt Recording and Reporting, which upgrades the debt database to cover central government, guarantees, on-lent loans, and called contingencies with regular reconciliation and publication; Debt Strategy and Sustainability Analysis, which institutionalizes an annual medium-term debt management strategy with back-assessment of results, equips authorities to conduct debt sustainability analysis consistent with low-income country frameworks, and strengthens governance of the national debt committee and borrowing plan preparation; and Domestic Debt Market Monitoring, which implements real-time dashboards for issuance and risk, yield curve monitoring, and sovereign-bank nexus surveillance. Component 4: Institutional Reform, Change and Project Management consolidates reform delivery by supporting a functional review and restructuring of the merged Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Budget with change management, capacity building across revenue, expenditure, treasury, debt, and investment functions, integrated digital architecture for public financial management systems, targeted technical assistance, and a project implementation unit responsible for coordination, fiduciary management, environmental and social risk management, monitoring and evaluation, and independent mid-term and end-of-project evaluations.

The global economy is facing a major shock as the Middle East conflict drives sharp energy price increases. Global growth is projected to slow to 2.5 percent in 2026, with emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) facing the weakest per capita income growth since the pandemic. The effects across EMDE regions differ based on direct impact of the conflict, energy exposure, and policy buffers. Risks to the outlook remain skewed to the downside and include escalating hostilities, further commodity market disruptions, and additional geopolitical strains, while broader adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) offers some upside. Policy action is critical: globally to safeguard energy and food security and advance the energy transition, and domestically to control inflation, strengthen fiscal sustainability, and support job creation through investment in physical, human, and digital capital. Compounding pressures from the energy shock, rising debt is driving up sovereign borrowing costs for EMDEs, particularly for those most indebted, underscoring the need for stronger revenue mobilization and improved debt management. Commodity-exporting EMDEs can improve their fiscal resilience by using credible fiscal rules, maintaining well-governed sovereign wealth funds, and diversifying revenue sources to better manage commodity price cycles.

This report examines how digital technologies can expand access to mental health services in low-resource settings, where significant treatment gaps persist due to limited funding, workforce shortages, stigma, and inadequate service availability. It explores the role of digital interventions across the mental health care continuum, including prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment, and long-term support. Through global case studies and implementation examples, the report highlights the use of tools such as telehealth, AI-enabled applications, chatbots, electronic health records, digital referrals, clinical decision-support systems, mobile counseling platforms, and community-based digital solutions. It emphasizes the importance of user-centered design, data privacy, interoperability, responsible AI use, and alignment with national health strategies to ensure safe and sustainable implementation. The report provides practical lessons and recommendations for governments, health providers, and development partners seeking to leverage digital innovation to improve mental health outcomes, strengthen health systems, and advance equitable access to quality mental health care.