DAI - Public debt and liquidity management - 2022

Description of Project:

This is a baseline paper to inform a discussion on the impact of economic pressure and possibly further scoping/analysis which may be required to inform FCDO thinking on avenues for influencing and interventions by the UK or in partnership with others – focus on Myanmar public debt, what the regime has done domestically and internationally to raise debt since the coup and future plans. Mainly assess into (a) what has happened to the budget deficit (excluding grants) post-coup; (b) what has happened to external grants and borrowing post-coup; (c) how the budget deficit has been financed and consequences (e.g. inflation, reserves, crowding out); (d) what has been the human/social impact of the cut in public expenditure, i.e., impact on basic public services, poverty, human capital development etc (SDG goal type effects). It will identify opportunities for future intervention.

Description of actual services provided by your staff within the assignment:

●        Prepare questionnaire for primary data collection;

●        Develop project work-plan and map KII participants list;  

●        Coordinate with International/National level economist, politicians, activists, traders, business men, SME sectors, household level;

●        Conduct 20 in-depth interview with International/National level respondents;

●        Review databases that report on China data (SDDS, CEIC) and search the data in the other sources like Chinese SOEs’ annual reports or BRI reports;

●        Explore commercial databases e.g. Dealogic which reports bond issues, update published data and triangulate the existing data, as well as to develop an understanding of possible future trends;

●        Analyse a range of formal, informal and anecdotal sources, including published sources and data, social media, etc;

●        Analyse and evaluate findings of remote in-depth interviews of each sectors;

●        Cross-check findings between primary and secondary data sources and make recommendations for future trends; 

●        Submit the final report with executive summary to the DAI team. 

● Organize the presentation about the main-finding with the DAI expert and FCDO.