An Assessment of Fiscal Decentralization in Armenia

Natalia Golovanova, Galina Kurlandskaya. Eurasia // Local Government and Finance: The Challenges of the 21st Century. Second Global Report on Decentralization and Local Democracy. GOLD II. Mexico: United Cities and Local Governments. 2011. P. 117-152. , 2011

The major challenge of local governments in the eight countries under review (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine) over the past twenty years has been adjusting to the narrowing role and size of government, and the resulting reduction in local resources, while attempting to maintain the high quality of social services provided at the local level during the Soviet period. During the last years, positive trends have been seen in some countries in the field of decentralization. In Armenia, the list of local taxes and duties was enlarged in 2010. In Ukraine, the concept of Local Government Reform was recently approved, and a new framework for local self-government legislation is currently being developed. In 2010, Belarus adopted a law on Local Government and Self-government. However, in other countries, centralization tendencies are being observed: a reduced level of tax autonomy in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia; a nomination of local self-government heads by the central government in Kyrgyzstan; the reorganization of local governments in Georgia; as well as limitations to expenditure autonomy of local governments in Russia. The recent financial crisis has revealed weaknesses within the local finance system of some of the Eurasian countries, while in other countries local budgets seem to be doing better than central/regional ones due to their reliance on the most stable revenues sources.

2006

Armenia is still at an early stage in the process of post-Soviet state building and is struggling to build a fully functioning national administration using administrative machinery inherited from the Soviet Union and better suited to a local or regional government. This has resulted in a range of governance and institutional weaknesses and constraints that have impacted on public service provision and on poverty reduction since independence in 1991…

2013

2014

Research Result. Economic Research, 2017

This article is dedicated to studying the issues of the relationships between the values of the public debt and economic development of the countries. The literature review, conducted by the author on the topic, shows the presence of the opposite tendencies for developed and developing countries. In the paper, the dynamics of the values of the RA’s public debt, as well as the most important relative indicator – the «Public Debt/GDP» ratio are studied. At present, in the Armenian economy, this indicator has not exceeded its’ critical level. However, in the RA’s economy, we can see the conditions of this negative fact. One of the main problem is the structure of the RA’s public debt: the significant share of it is the external debt.

2011

Decentralization in Macedonia was conceived of in two different phases, allowing for an asymmetric allocation of fiscal powers. During the first phase, all local governments were assigned the responsibility to deliver only a few ? mainly communal ? local government functions. After fulfillment of specific conditions and approval by the central government, local governments in Macedonia would be allowed to take on their broader functional responsibilities. Using a detailed dataset of local government finances, this study analyzes the evolution of local government revenues and expenditures in Macedonia and highlights the main problems of the country's intergovernmental finance system.

2010

This study analyzes the funding of local governments in Macedonia today, and whether the current intergovernmental fiscal system provides adequate funding to the local government level. The study relies on a new local government finance database to present a picture of how local government finances have evolved over the last three years, and provides a concrete proposal for initial reforms that would improve the adequacy, efficiency, and equity of intergovernmental financial relations in Macedonia.

2002

IMF Working Papers

WP/22/118 IMF Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to encourage debate. The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.

Regional Science Policy & Practice, 2020

This paper investigates the financial decentralization in the Republic of Armenia (RA) within the context of community consolidation processes that started in RA in 2015. It presents conclusive and empirically tested interpretation of the changes in the own‐sourced revenues of the community budgets due to consolidation processes and assesses the pace and direction of changes in the weight of own‐sourced revenues in the consolidated vs. non‐consolidated community budgets using β‐ and σ‐convergence models. It has examined the data collected from 501 communities in RA from 2015 through 2018. The results of the research pinpoint that the growth pace of own‐sourced revenues is higher in the consolidated communities as compared to non‐consolidated communities. This evidence supports the initial hypothesis specified in the “Concept of community consolidation and formation of intercommunity units” adopted by the Government of RA, that the consolidation of communities will result in expansio...