Scaling up aid or scaling down: the global economic crisis and Rwanda's MDGs

Hans Lofgren, Hannah Nielsen and Kene Ezemenari

No 4958, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Rwanda is not on track to achieve most of the Millennium Development Goals at a time when hopes for scaled-up aid are mixed with concerns that, in the context of the global economic crisis, aid instead will be scaled down. This paper analyzes the effects of alternative scenarios for grant aid, government spending allocations (between infrastructure, agriculture, and human development), and government efficiency. The authors use an economy-wide model for development strategy analysis, Maquette for Millennium Development Goal Simulations. Under a plausible scenario for increased aid, annual growth in gross domestic product increases by as much as 0.6 percentage points relative to a baseline with a growth rate of 6 percent; by 2020, the headcount poverty rate declines to 32 percent, 3 percentage points lower than for the baseline. A plausible scenario for reduced aid leads to a symmetric growth reduction but a more pronounced increase in poverty, at 40 percent in 2020. When aid increases, the most positive growth and poverty reduction impacts occur if spending increases are allocated to infrastructure and agriculture; progress in human health and education is significant but weaker than if additional spending is focused on these areas. Given synergies and diminishing marginal returns from expansion in a limited area, the scenarios that may appear most attractive and politically feasible have a broad and balanced expansion across government functions, promoting both growth and human development.

Keywords: Population Policies; Economic Theory&Research; Debt Markets; Achieving Shared Growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-06-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSC ... ered/PDF/WPS4958.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4958

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().