## BOOSTING HUMAN CAPITAL, ACCELERATING DEVELOPMENT, AND LOWERING INEQUALITY IN SIERRA LEONE

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### A. Motivation — expected macroeconomic gains from education reform
- Key projected macroeconomic impacts (model-based long-run steady states):
  - Lifting educational attainment to lower-secondary completion for all children: GDP +40 percent; Gini −7 points; revenue-to-GDP +1.8 percentage points.
  - Leveling girls’ education to boys’ levels: GDP +8.2 percent (more than 8 percent reported elsewhere in the chapter).
  - Increasing the quality of education at current enrollment/completion levels: GDP +27.3 percent (reported as +27 percent in summary).
- Policy emphasis:
  - With limited fiscal space, prioritize, sequence, and target interventions; coordinate across sectors.
  - Focus areas: education quality (curricula aligned to labor market skills), remove barriers preventing girls’ attendance (sanitary facilities, harmful traditional practices), strengthen collaboration with Ministry of Health, and maintain timely monitoring (education data hub).

### B. Stylized facts — human capital, health, and education indicators
- Health and survival:
  - Probability a child dies before age five: 11 in 100 children.
  - One in four children under five is stunted.
  - Only about three in five 15-year-olds survive to age 60.
- Education quantity and learning:
  - Children complete an average of 9 years of education, but learning outcomes equate to about 4½ years of high-quality education.
- Ebola impact:
  - All schools closed; 1.7 million primary and secondary students did not attend school for at least nine months.
  - 3,300 Sierra Leonean orphans created by Ebola.
  - UNICEF estimates indirect cost of lost future human capital due to Ebola at 8.8 to 9.8 percent of 2016’s GDP.
- Recent health trends and public spending:
  - Under-five and maternal mortality rates have halved since 1996.
  - DPT immunization for 12–23 months-old children reached 90 percent in 2017.
  - Incidence of malaria around 38 percent.
  - Public health expenditures: 1.6 percent of GDP.
- Enrollment and parity:
  - Primary net enrollment close to 100 percent.
  - Secondary enrollment close to 43 percent in 2017.
  - Secondary-level gender parity: 95 girls per 100 boys.
- Inequality and heterogeneity:
  - A boy in the bottom 20 percent is more than five times as likely to receive no education as a boy in the richest 20 percent.
  - A boy from the richest 20 percent is more than ten-times more likely to complete secondary or higher education than a boy from the poorest 40 percent.
  - Probability of a girl receiving no education is more than 10 percentage points higher than for a boy in every income group.
  - Rural children are two to three times more likely not to receive any education.
  - Urban–rural completion gaps: boys (girls) in urban areas are five (16) times more likely to complete secondary or higher education than boys (girls) in rural areas.
  - Strong regional disparities (example: boy from Pujehun almost six times as likely to receive no education than a boy from Western Urban Area).

### C. Government’s Free Quality Education (FQE) initiative — actions and fiscal context
- Institutional and program actions:
  - Two Ministers of Education appointed (basic & secondary; tertiary & higher education) plus a special presidential FQE coordinator.
  - Government allocated 21 percent of recurrent budget to education (including tertiary and TVET) in the first year of FQE.
  - Payroll of university lecturers/professors incorporated into public payroll and ring-fenced.
  - Procured 50 new school buses (rolled out September 2019).
  - Teaching Service Commission: performance management training for ~1,700 teachers; recruited 5,000 teachers.
  - Procured 6 million exercise books for government and government-assisted primary and secondary schools.
  - School feeding increased from 95 thousand to more than 128 thousand pupils since FQE launch; target expansion to 428 thousand students.
  - Increased tertiary support through scholarships for engineering and science; focus on TVET.
- Monitoring and governance:
  - Education surveys before and after FQE; DSTI developed web-based GIS for schools.
  - Commitment to fight corruption: high-profile indictments related to exam cheating; Teaching Service Commission to oversee payroll governance and teacher conduct.
- Fiscal/spending context:
  - Education spending components tracked (payroll, capital (domestic), recurrent), and education spending as percent of primary expenditures referenced (see Figure 5 in source).

### D. Model framework, data inputs, and caveats
- Model purpose and structure:
  - Micro-founded general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents; computes new long-run steady states when education levels/quality are transmitted across the labor force.
  - Captures labor market (formal/informal), employment, income distribution, gender inequality, and Government.
- Key agents and mechanisms:
  - Households: parents and children; men always work; women face work costs capturing reduced home production and social norms; children's education depends on government spending, household income, and gender.
  - Firms produce formal goods, hire employees, pay corporate taxes.
  - Human capital depends on education (and its efficiency) and prior labor market experience.
  - Government provides education, purchases formal goods, and taxes households/firms; cost of an additional schooling year assumed linear.
- Data and calibration:
  - Labor market: Sierra Leone 2014 Labor Force Survey; share in vulnerable employment: 86 percent; IMF (2017) informal sector size ~58 percent of GDP.
  - Education: Demographic and Health Survey 2013; 2014 Labor Force Survey for returns.
  - Income distribution: 2011 and 2018 Integrated Household Surveys.
  - Fiscal parameters: taxes on goods and services = 2.7 percent of GDP; excises = 1.1 percent of GDP.
- Caveats and assumptions:
  - Model abstracts from other constraints (infrastructure, business environment); labor market clears (no unemployment under participation growth); limited demographic dynamics.
  - Data gaps (some surveys from 2013–2014) introduce uncertainty.
  - Cost assumption: increasing completion rates raises public education cost proportionately.
  - Model abstracts from large share of non-government-funded schools; calibration subsumes low teacher certification and low teacher-student contact times.

### E. Simulation scenarios — quantitative long-term impacts
- Overall headline: macroeconomic benefits can be substantial—up to 40 percent of GDP (and higher under upper-secondary completion scenarios).
- Scenario 1 — Close gender gaps within each income quintile:
  - Female wages +30.9 percent.
  - GDP +8.2 percent (formal + informal); Formal GDP +8.6 percent; Informal GDP +8 percent.
  - Government revenues +0.6 percent of GDP.
  - Gini −1 point.
  - Top 10%/bottom 10% income ratio: drops by 3.6 percent (from 9.4 to 9.0).
- Scenario 2 — Ensure all children complete at least primary education:
  - Female wages +38 percent; Male wages +13 percent.
  - GDP > +18 percent; Formal GDP +19.6 percent; Informal GDP +17.7 percent.
  - Formal sector productivity −5.1 percent (if no anti-discrimination policies); Informal productivity +28.9 percent.
  - Government revenues +0.8 percent of GDP.
  - Gini falls by almost 6 points.
  - Top 10%/bottom 10% income ratio declines by 35.7 percent (from 9.4 to 6.0).
- Scenario 3 — Ensure all children complete at least lower secondary education:
  - GDP +40 percent; Formal GDP +48.4 percent; Informal GDP +36.9 percent.
  - Formal productivity +9.0 percent; Informal productivity +54.8 percent.
  - Government revenues +1.8 percent of GDP.
  - Gini drops by more than 7 points.
  - Top 10%/bottom 10% income ratio drops by more than 44 percent (from 9.4 to 5.2).
- Scenario 4 — Ensure all children complete at least upper secondary education:
  - GDP > +60 percent; Formal GDP +72 percent; Informal GDP +56 percent.
  - Labor supply in informal sector −12 percent.
  - Formal productivity +28 percent; Informal productivity +77.5 percent.
  - Revenue-to-GDP ratio +3 percentage points.
  - Gini drops by more than 7 points; top10%/bottom10% ratio drops by more than 45 percent.
- Scenario 5 — Raise quality of education by 50 percent (quality-adjusted years +50 percent):
  - GDP +27.3 percent; Formal GDP +32.5 percent; Informal GDP +23.8 percent.
  - Formal productivity +31.4 percent; Informal productivity +22.1 percent.
  - Income inequality: relatively unaffected (relative endowments across strata unchanged).

### F. Policy implications and selected recommendations
- Strategic priorities:
  - Attain free secondary education for all as a long-run objective; prioritize basic education and close gender gaps, especially among poorest families.
  - Target rural communities to accelerate redistribution and reduce inequality.
  - School catchment planning to guide infrastructure investment and rational expansion of government-approved schools via bidding processes.
- Quality improvements and efficiency:
  - Focus on teacher quality (competent, qualified, committed workforce); include community teachers in reforms.
  - Reform curriculum and introduce a senior secondary teaching syllabus aligned to labor market demands.
- Prioritizing, sequencing, and governance:
  - Evidence-based prioritizing, sequencing, and targeting given constrained fiscal space.
  - Monitor education spending and impacts; enhance transparency and accountability in resource allocation and transfers from center to districts.
  - Clarify mandates and strengthen accountability across institutions and sector plans.
- Cross-sector coordination and constraints removal:
  - Address infrastructure gaps (roads, public health, treated water, electricity) that indirectly affect learning, especially for rural areas, girls, and children with disabilities.
  - Tackle high adolescent fertility and child marriage to reduce dropouts and improve girls’ education.
- Monitoring, data, and communication:
  - Design standard data surveys with equity-focused questions; track progress and communicate successes/setbacks with stakeholders; integrate outreach campaigns educating parents that education is a right for all children.

### G. Arrears in Sierra Leone — scope, scenarios, and clearance principles
- Legacy and scope:
  - Domestic arrears reconciled to Le 3.3 trillion as of April 2018 (around 8¾ percent of 2019 non-iron ore GDP).
  - A further ¾ percent of GDP in arrears accumulated since April 2018; end-2019 stock ~9½ percent of non-iron ore GDP.
  - ASSL audit of claims Le 11.6 trillion (2010–18) verified Le 4.5 trillion (nearly 14 percent of 2019 GDP).
  - At IMF program approval (November 2018), estimated arrears ~4 percent of GDP.
  - 90 percent of pre-April 2018 arrears accrued in two years before April 2018 election.
  - >75 percent of pre-April 2018 arrears in roads (41 percent), security (21 percent), energy (17 percent).
- Regional context:
  - For 29 sub-Saharan African countries, >80 percent report domestic expenditure arrears; average stock 3.3 percent of GDP.
- Front-loaded full-face repayment scenario (1–10 years) implications:
  - Additional financing needs (amortization + interest): ~2.9 percent of GDP in 2020; 2.1 percent in 2021; 1.5 percent in 2022.
  - Cash payments implied around 1 percent of GDP in 2020.
  - Tradeable securities of 4 percent of GDP would exceed banking system absorption capacity.
  - Implied NPV ratios across supplier groups ranged 71–114 percent of face value.
- Guiding principles for arrears clearance:
  - Transparency, equitable treatment of suppliers, and realistic specification of available resources, timeframes, sequence, and modalities.
  - Prioritization criteria: socioeconomic impact, fiscal cost, contract age.
  - Ensure similar NPV terms across modalities.
- Preferred modalities (in order):
  - Cash payment from budget if fiscal space available (preferred).
  - Absent cash, combine haircuts and repayment terms yielding equivalent NPV reduction as cash.
  - If suppliers prefer government-backed instruments, issue promissory notes or non-tradeable securities directly.
  - Explore mixes (e.g., upfront goodwill cash to negotiate haircuts before rescheduling remainder).
- Caution on securitization:
  - Should be last resort due to moral hazard, discounting of instruments reducing supplier working capital, and high T-bill rates (currently over 20 percent) creating interest burden.
- Illustrative haircut-based clearance scenario (clears most arrears by 2025; fully by 2029):
  - Uses a 55 percent haircut on Arrears Portion 1 (Total Le 3,318 billion) and securitization for a smaller portion; implied additional fiscal burden in 2020 of 0.7 percent of non-iron ore GDP, falling gradually thereafter.
  - Operational recommendations: pursue deep NPV reductions broadly similar across suppliers; avoid piecemeal resolutions; publish clearance strategy; undertake robust PFM reforms; mobilize highly concessional external resources and combine with haircuts/rescheduling.
- Box 2 — simulated scenarios and headline fiscal space needs (percent of non-iron ore GDP):
  - Front-loaded heavy securitization: 2020 = 2.9; 2021 = 2.1; 2022 = 1.5; 2023 = 0.6; 2024 = 0.5; 2025 = 0.4. Debt sustainable? No. Market bear? No.
  - Zero interest rate: 2020 = 2.5; 2021 = 1.8; 2022 = 1.2; 2023 = 0.4; 2024 = 0.4; 2025 = 0.1. Debt sustainable? No. Market bear? No.
  - Phased issuance: 2020 = 2.1; 2021 = 2.2; 2022 = 1.6; 2023 = 1.0; 2024 = 0.6; 2025 = 0.2. Debt sustainable? No. Market bear? No.
  - Haircut: 2020 = 2.4; 2021 = 1.7; 2022 = 1.2; 2023 = 0.5; 2024 = 0.4; 2025 = 0.2. Debt sustainable? No. Market bear? No.
  - Haircut with goodwill payment: 2020 = 3.1; 2021 = 1.5; 2022 = 0.9; 2023 = 0.4; 2024 = 0.3; 2025 = 0.1. Debt sustainable? No. Market bear? No.
  - Combination of options: 2020 = 0.9; 2021 = 1.0; 2022 = 1.1; 2023 = 0.6; 2024 = 0.6; 2025 = 0.3. Debt sustainable? Borderline. Market bear? Borderline.
- Preventing further arrears accumulation — reforms and operational priorities:
  - Realistic top-down budgeting with credible MDA ceilings; integrate multi-year commitments for capital projects.
  - Effective expenditure controls via IFMIS: control commitments, automate processes, roll out IFMIS to large spending agencies, interim Invoice Tracking System.
  - Robust cash and debt management: improve coordinated information sharing; MoF to incorporate external budget support, capital expenditure flows, and discretionary expenditures into cash forecasts; strengthen Cash Management Committee.
  - Progress: 57 of 70 MDAs now use IFMIS; most MDA accounts consolidated in Treasury Single Account.

### H. External vulnerability, monetary policy effectiveness, and priority reforms
- External vulnerability:
  - Reliance on imports: 30 percent of GDP.
  - Reserve coverage preliminarily at 3.5 months of imports as of end-December 2019.
  - Real exchange rate overvaluation estimated at about 20–30 percent.
- Monetary policy transmission and shallow financial markets:
  - Small share of domestic credit to private sector limits role of interest rates.
  - Empirical associations:
    - 100-basis point increase in MPR associated with 54–75 basis points increase in Treasury bills same month.
    - Same 100-basis point MPR increase associated with only 7–8 basis points increase in deposit and lending rates with a one-month lag.
  - Past decade: similar money aggregate growth despite rapid inflation increases since 2015.
  - Correlation between inflation and net credit to government as share of base money = 0.90 (January 2011–March 2019).
  - Credit to private sector ~5 percent of GDP.
- Under fiscal dominance:
  - Central bank financing of government monetizes deficits, increases money supply and inflation.
  - Higher interest rates raise government debt service, pressuring central bank to adopt less-tight policies.
- Reserve money targeting and hybrid approach:
  - Reserve money targeting appropriate near term to anchor inflation and for Fund-supported program monitoring, but has limitations given weak short-run correlation with inflation.
  - Recommendation to transition to a hybrid operational framework: reserve money as primary operating target while enhancing control of short-term interest rates.
- Priority policy areas:
  - Curtail fiscal dominance: reduce central bank financing to government; put fiscal deficit on sustainable path per Fund-supported program.
  - Institutional reforms: implement BSL Act to reinforce central bank independence; if de facto independence delayed, jointly determine medium-term inflation objectives while BSL retains responsibility for achieving them.
  - Strengthen monetary policy implementation: comprehensive liquidity injection/draining operations; use foreign exchange operations to smooth volatility or meet reserve targets.
  - Enhance analytical capacity and statistics: strengthen capacity for model-based forecasts; Statistics Sierra Leone to improve inflation data quality and collaborate with BSL.
  - Forward-looking communication: develop transparent monetary policy strategy and improve predictability through enhanced communication.

*Source: IMF staff paper chapter content from “BOOSTING HUMAN CAPITAL, ACCELERATING DEVELOPMENT, AND LOWERING INEQUALITY IN SIERRA LEONE.”*

### References _____________________________________________________________________________ 20

### BOOSTING HUMAN CAPITAL, ACCELERATING DEVELOPMENT, AND LOWERING INEQUALITY IN SIERRA LEONE

### A. Motivation
- Education is central to the Government’s 2019-23 National Development Plan (NDP) as the backbone of economic and social development.
- Literature evidence cited:
  - Ensuring all children receive a minimum of 5 years of education could raise GDP by 8 percent (example from Senegal).
  - Lifting girls’ education in each income quintile to boys’ levels in Nigeria would boost GDP by 5 percent.
- Key macroeconomic projections from the analysis:
  - Lifting educational attainment to lower-secondary completion for all children could increase Sierra Leone’s GDP by 40 percent.
  - This scenario could lower income inequality by 7 points on the Gini scale.
  - It could permanently increase the revenue-to-GDP ratio by 1.8 percentage points.
  - Leveling the playing field for boys and girls in education could boost GDP by more than 8 percent.
  - Increasing the quality of education at current enrollment and completion levels could boost GDP by 27 percent.
- Policy emphasis: with limited fiscal space, evidence-based prioritizing, sequencing, and targeting of policies—coordinated across sectors—is critical. Focus on quality of education, curricula tailored to labor market skills, removing constraints preventing girls from attending school (including sanitary facilities and harmful traditional practices), and collaboration with the Ministry of Health. Continued monitoring via timely data (including a newly launched education data hub) is important.

### B. Stylized Facts (Human capital, health, and education indicators)
- World Bank Human Capital Index ranks Sierra Leone among the seven countries with the largest human capital challenges; weak health indicators are the main driver.
- Child survival and nutrition:
  - Probability that a child will die before his or her fifth birthday: 11 in 100 children.
  - One in four children under the age of five is stunted.
  - Only about three in five 15-year-olds survive to the age of 60.
- Education quantity and quality:
  - Children complete an average of 9 years of education, but learning outcomes are on par with receiving only 4½ years of education of high quality.
- Ebola shock:
  - All schools closed and 1.7 million primary and secondary students did not attend school for at least nine months.
  - 3,300 Sierra Leonean orphans created by Ebola.
  - UNICEF estimates the indirect cost of lost future human capital due to the Ebola crisis at 8.8 to 9.8 percent of 2016’s GDP.
- Recent health trends:
  - Under-five and maternal mortality rates have halved since 1996.
  - Diphtheria (DPT) immunization for 12–23 months-old children reached 90 percent in 2017.
  - Incidence of malaria remains around 38 percent (stagnant and twice the sub-Saharan African average).
  - Incidence of tuberculosis barely changed over the past decade while peer averages declined.
  - Public health expenditures are 1.6 percent of GDP.
- Enrollment and gender parity:
  - Primary enrollment rates are close to 100 percent (net) and above 100 percent (gross).
  - Secondary enrollment rates close to 43 percent in 2017.
  - Gender parity at secondary level: 95 girls for every 100 boys.
- Heterogeneity in educational attainment:
  - A boy in the bottom 20 percent of income distribution is more than five times as likely to receive no education as a boy in the richest 20 percent.
  - A boy from the richest 20 percent is more than ten-times more likely to complete secondary education or achieve higher education than a boy from the poorest 40 percent.
  - The probability of a girl receiving no education is more than 10 percentage points higher than for a boy in every income group.
  - Urban-rural divide: children in rural areas are two to three times more likely not to receive any education.
  - Boys (girls) in urban areas are five (16) times more likely to complete secondary or higher education than boys (girls) in rural areas.
  - Strong regional disparities (example: a boy from Pujehun is almost six times as likely to not receive any education than a boy from the Western Urban Area).

### C. Government’s Policy Initiatives (Free Quality Education—FQE)
- NDP 2018–23 prioritizes education; FQE aims to deliver free quality primary and secondary education by increasing access and expanding quality and governance.
- Cost control: a cut-off date (school year ending June/July 2018) limited beneficiaries to those already registered in government and government-assisted schools.
- Specific measures and actions implemented:
  - Leadership: two Ministers of Education appointed (basic & secondary; tertiary & higher education) plus a special presidential appointee coordinating the FQE program.
  - Financing allocation: Government allocated 21 percent of recurrent budget to education (including tertiary and TVET) in the first year of FQE—within the SDG target.
    - The government stepped up efforts to improve budget execution to avoid past gaps between allocations and outcomes.
    - Payroll of university lecturers and professors was incorporated into the public payroll and ring-fenced from usual transfers.
  - Program implementation:
    - Procured an initial 50 new school buses rolled out at the start of the 2019/20 academic year in September 2019.
    - Teaching Service Commission launched performance management training for almost 1,700 teachers and recruited 5,000 teachers.
    - Procured 6 million exercise books and supplied them to all government and government-assisted primary and secondary schools.
    - School feeding provision increased from 95 thousand to more than 128 thousand pupils since FQE launch; aim is to expand to 428 thousand students.
    - Increased support to tertiary institutions through scholarships for engineering and science courses; special attention to technical and vocational education to boost youth employment.
  - Monitoring: education surveys before and after FQE; Directorate of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI) established and helped develop a web-based geographic information system for government and government-assisted schools to analyze education survey results.
  - Governance: government commitment to fight corruption in the sector; high-profile indictments related to exam cheating; special appointee working with development partners to set up an education basket fund; Teaching Service Commission to oversee education payroll governance and regulate teacher conduct and performance.
- Fiscal and spending context (education spending, 2017–19):
  - Education spending components and allocations tracked, including payroll, capital spending (domestic), recurrent spending, and education spending as a percent of primary expenditures (presented in Figure 5 of the source).

### D. Implications and Policy Priorities (from analysis)
- Large long-term payoffs from boosting completion rates and improving quality:
  - Universal lower-secondary completion → GDP +40 percent; Gini −7 points; revenue-to-GDP +1.8 percentage points.
  - Closing gender gaps → GDP +8 percent.
  - Improving quality at current enrollment/completion → GDP +27 percent.
- Key policy priorities highlighted:
  - Prioritize and sequence reforms given limited fiscal space.
  - Focus on quality improvements: curricula aligned to marketable skills.
  - Address barriers to girls’ education: sanitary facilities, interventions to reduce adolescent fertility and harmful traditional practices.
  - Strengthen cross-sector collaboration, especially with Ministry of Health.
  - Maintain and expand timely data collection and monitoring (education data hub, school surveys, GIS of schools).
  - Improve governance and transparency in education financing and payroll management.
  - Targeted interventions to reduce regional, rural-urban, income, and gender disparities.

*Source: IMF staff paper prepared by Vivian Malta, Monique Newiak, and Mathew Sandy (Sierra Leone Ministry of Finance); content from “BOOSTING HUMAN CAPITAL, ACCELERATING DEVELOPMENT, AND LOWERING INEQUALITY IN SIERRA LEONE.”*

### 11.      Motivated by large education gaps and the Government’s intention to address

### 1sleea2020002 - 11.      Motivated by large education gaps and the Government’s intention to address

### Model framework and purpose
- Quantifies macroeconomic gains of different education policies using a micro-founded general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents.
- For each education policy, the model implies a new steady state in the long run (i.e., within a few generations), when new education levels and quality are transmitted to the entire labor force.
- The model captures: the labor market (employment, income), income distribution, education outcomes, gender inequality, and the Government.

### Key model features and agents
- Households:
  - Consist of parents and children, or only parents when children left home to form their own families.
  - Parents make joint decisions for the household on consumption, labor supply and savings.
  - Men always work and decide how much labor to supply in the formal and informal sectors.
  - Women can work. If women work, the family incurs a cost capturing fewer hours in home production and social norms; the model captures barriers through the gap in labor force participation rates between men and women. When a woman works, she and her husband decide together how much labor she supplies in the formal and informal sectors.
  - Children go to school; future productivity and incomes depend on human capital accumulated, including education. A child’s level of education depends on government expenditures on education, household incomes and the child’s gender, calibrated to stylized facts.
- Firms hire employees, produce formal goods, and pay corporate taxes.
- There are formal and informal labor markets. Working men and women receive income and, when employed in the formal sector, pay taxes on wages.
- Individual human capital depends on education (and its efficiency) and previous labor market experience. The note uses data to estimate current returns on actual years of education, then separately highlights gains from increasing the quality of each year of education.
- Government: provides education, buys formal goods, and taxes households and firms. The model assumes the cost of providing an additional year of education is linear with respect to the number of schooling years.

### Data and calibration inputs
- Labor market:
  - Sierra Leone 2014 Labor Force Survey informs labor market structure and gender income gaps.
  - Women’s earnings are just a fraction of men’s earnings in formal and informal sectors.
  - Gender gap in labor force participation rates is relatively narrow (2 percentage points) and informs the estimate of the cost of women’s work in the model.
  - Share of people in vulnerable employment: 86 percent (World Bank Development Indicators) proxies informal employment share.
  - IMF (2017) estimates size of the informal sector in Sierra Leone to be just above 58 percent of GDP.
- Education:
  - Demographic and Health Survey 2013 provides overview of educational attainment across households by income and gender.
  - 2014 Labor Force Survey provides estimates to quantify gains from higher levels of education and returns from additional work experience.
- Income distribution:
  - 2011 and 2018 Integrated Household Surveys serve as reference points for income distribution.
- Fiscal:
  - Sierra Leone Ministry of Finance and IMF staff estimates inform taxation parameters: taxes on goods and services equal 2.7 percent of GDP and excises equal 1.1 percent of GDP.
  - UNESCO Institute for Statistics and World Bank Development Indicators inform spending on education estimates.

### Model caveats and simplifying assumptions
- Exogenous factors:
  - Model abstracts from changes in other constraints or sources of labor market changes (e.g., infrastructure, business environment); these are not endogenous.
  - Labor market clears—implying no unemployment even under strong labor force participation growth.
  - Demographic change is not accounted for beyond some parameters; population dynamics impacts on public service delivery are not modeled.
- Data input uncertainty:
  - Some surveys date back to 2014 or 2013; data gaps mean estimated elasticities are subject to uncertainty, and calibration results are subject to uncertainty.
- Cost of education:
  - Model assumes increasing school completion rates increases cost of public education proportionately.
  - Forthcoming publications by DfID highlight significant total cost of providing all resources for the FQE Program (Mambo 2019); additional research needed on reform costs.
- Public vs. private schooling:
  - Model abstracts from the large share of schools not funded by government; calibration of low education quality subsumes the large share of teachers not government approved and low teacher-student contact times.

### Simulation scenarios and quantitative long-term impacts (model results)
- Overall headline:
  - Results indicate macroeconomic benefits of education could be substantial, in the order of up to 40 percent of GDP in the long run.
- Scenario 1 — Closing gaps between boys and girls in access to education within each income quintile:
  - Female wages: +30.9 percent.
  - GDP (formal + informal): +8.2 percent in the long term.
  - Formal sector GDP: +8.6 percent.
  - Informal sector GDP: +8 percent.
  - Government revenues under current tax policies: larger by 0.6 percent of GDP in the new steady state.
  - Income inequality: Gini coefficient declines by 1-point.
  - Income ratio top 10% to bottom 10%: drops by 3.6 percent (from an average income ratio of 9.4 to 9.0).
- Scenario 2 — Ensuring all children complete at least primary education:
  - Female wages: +38 percent.
  - Male wages: +13 percent.
  - GDP: increases by more than 18 percent in the long term.
  - Formal sector GDP: +19.6 percent.
  - Informal sector GDP: +17.7 percent.
  - Formal sector productivity (output per hours worked): would drop by 5.1 percent (assuming no anti-discrimination policies).
  - Informal sector productivity: +28.9 percent.
  - Government revenues under current tax policies and formal sector size: increase by 0.8 percent of GDP in the new steady state.
  - Income inequality: Gini coefficient falls by almost 6 points.
  - Income ratio top 10% to bottom 10%: declines by 35.7 percent (from an average income ratio of 9.4 to 6.0).
- Scenario 3 — Ensuring all children complete at least lower secondary education:
  - GDP: increases by 40 percent.
  - Formal sector GDP: +48.4 percent.
  - Informal sector GDP: +36.9 percent.
  - Formal sector productivity: +9.0 percent.
  - Informal sector productivity: +54.8 percent.
  - Government revenues: boost by 1.8 percent of GDP.
  - Income inequality: Gini coefficient drops by more than 7 points.
  - Income ratio top 10% to bottom 10%: drops by more than 44 percent (from an average income ratio of 9.4 to 5.2).
- Scenario 4 — Ensuring all children complete upper secondary education:
  - GDP: boosts by more than 60 percent.
  - Formal sector GDP: +72 percent.
  - Informal sector GDP: +56 percent.
  - Labor supply in informal sector: would decline by 12 percent.
  - Formal sector productivity: +28 percent.
  - Informal sector productivity: +77.5 percent.
  - Revenue-to-GDP ratio: could increase by 3 percentage points.
  - Income inequality: Gini coefficient drops by more than 7 points.
  - Income ratio top 10% to bottom 10%: drops by more than 45 percent.
- Scenario 5 — Raising the quality of education by 50 percent (increasing the number of years of quality-adjusted schooling by 50 percent):
  - GDP: +27.3 percent.
  - Formal sector GDP: +32.5 percent.
  - Informal sector GDP: +23.8 percent.
  - Formal sector productivity: +31.4 percent.
  - Informal sector productivity: +22.1 percent.
  - Income inequality: remains relatively unaffected as relative endowments of education across strata do not change.

### Policy implications and selected recommendations
- Investments in education and quality for all children yield substantial macroeconomic gains; these gains motivate sustained, multi-pronged policy interventions.
- Equalizing access to education:
  - Attaining free secondary education for all is a critical long-run objective.
  - Prioritize basic education and close the gender gap in education, especially for the poorest families.
  - Policy interventions targeting rural communities would accelerate redistribution and reduce income inequality.
  - Example measure: school catchment planning to guide infrastructure investment and rational expansion of government-approved schools in a bidding process to correct inequitable distribution.
- Raising quality of education:
  - Even at current enrollment rates, raising quality would yield significant gains; focus on increasing efficiency.
  - Improvements include: (i) working on teacher quality—to ensure a competent, qualified, and committed workforce; (ii) reforming the curriculum and introducing a teaching syllabus at the senior secondary level.
- Prioritizing, sequencing and targeting given limited fiscal space:
  - Evidence-based prioritizing, sequencing and targeting of policies is critical.
  - Careful monitoring of education spending and impacts will help reassess programs and priorities.
  - Enhance governance so spending aligns with needs across levels.
  - Strengthen multi-sector systems and: (i) clarify mandates and strengthen accountability across institutions, policies and acts; (ii) realistic sector planning; (iii) significantly reduce discrepancies in resources transferred from center to district level; (iv) enhance transparency and accountability in resource allocation to schools.
- Cross-sector coordination to remove constraints:
  - Quality in education: teacher quality lags sub-Saharan African average; public education infrastructure is lower than average low-income country. With many teachers neither certified nor on public payroll, improvements must include community teachers and curriculum aligned to labor market demands.
  - Infrastructure gaps: shortfalls in roads, public health, treated water, electricity indirectly impact learning—especially for rural areas, girls, and children with disabilities. For example, lack of treated water and sanitation and poor roads disproportionately affect girls and children with disabilities.
  - High adolescent fertility: despite declines, rates remain high compared to sub-Saharan African and low-income country averages; high adolescent fertility increases maternal and child health risks and contributes to girls leaving school. Eradicating child marriage would reduce adolescent fertility and increase girls’ education.

*Source: IMF staff simulations and analysis contained in the referenced chapter.*

### 21.      Collaboration is therefore essential. Given the strong linkages between education and

### 1sleea2020002 - 21.      Collaboration is therefore essential. Given the strong linkages between education and

### Cross-sector collaboration and education reform
- Collaboration across ministries, departments and agencies, programs, development partners and civil society organizations is essential given strong linkages between education and other sectors (nutrition, health, energy, infrastructure).
- Rationale:
  - Large number of actors involved and the extent and duration of policy reforms.
  - Scale of investments required from scarce public resources.
- Quick-win and lower-cost interventions:
  - Implementing a budget constructed to target more equitable outcomes along gender lines or other dimensions such as disability or age to tweak interventions within existing programs.
  - Enforcement of laws to end harmful traditional practices, such as child marriage, to help reduce adolescent fertility and drop-out rates.
  - Integrating outreach campaigns that educate parents that education is a right for all children into other activities.

### Monitoring, data, and communication for long-term education improvements
- Continuous monitoring and communication are essential given the long-term nature of education system improvements.
- Actions recommended:
  - Design standard data surveys to integrate additional questions on education and equitable outcomes to boost information on critical topics.
  - Track progress and communicate successes and setbacks with stakeholders, including parents, to build and maintain support for needed changes.
  - Integrate outreach campaigns on educational rights into other activities.

### Constraints to education (illustrative indicators)
- Source indicators referenced from World Bank World Development Indicators include:
  - Public education infrastructure (secondary teachers per 1,000 persons).
  - Electricity production per capita (thousands of kWh per person).
  - Roads (per capita as km per 1,000 persons).
  - Public health infrastructure (hospital beds per 1,000 persons).
  - Access to treated water (percent of population).
  - Access to Electricity (Percent of Population).
  - Adolescent fertility rate (Births per 1,000 women ages 15-19).
- Comparative groups cited: Low income; Lower MIC; Sierra Leone; Sub-Saharan Africa; All; Rural; Urban; and date series points including 1996, 2006, 2016.

### Managing and preventing arrears in Sierra Leone — key findings
- Legacy arrears and scope:
  - Comprehensive reconciliation revealed domestic arrears of Le 3.3 trillion as of April 2018 (or around 8¾ percent of 2019 non-iron ore GDP).
  - A further ¾ percent of GDP in arrears accumulated since April 2018, bringing the end-2019 total stock to around 9½ percent of non-iron ore GDP.
  - ASSL audit of claims totaling Le 11.6 trillion covering 2010–18 verified claims of Le 4.5 trillion (nearly 14 percent of 2019 GDP).
  - At the time the IMF-supported program was approved in November 2018, estimated arrears were about 4 percent of GDP.
  - Of pre-April 2018 arrears, 90 percent accrued in the two years before the April 2018 election.
  - More than three-quarters of pre-April 2018 arrears reflect unpaid bills in three sectors—roads, energy, and security (roads 41 percent; security 21 percent; energy 17 percent).
- Regional context:
  - Data for 29 countries in sub-Saharan Africa suggest more than eighty percent report domestic expenditure arrears, with an average stock of 3.3 percent of GDP.

### Fiscal and financial implications of a front-loaded clearance scenario
- A front-loaded arrears clearance scenario repaying arrears over 1 to 10 years on full-face value (without haircuts) and securitizing some 4 percent of GDP would be unsustainable:
  - Implied additional financing needs through amortization and interest of approximately 2.9 percent of GDP in 2020, 2.1 percent in 2021, and 1.5 percent in 2022.
  - Cash payments implied around 1 percent of GDP in 2020.
  - Tradeable securities of 4 percent of GDP would substantially exceed banking system absorption capacity.
  - Implied NPV ratios across supplier groups ranged from 71 to 114 percent of the face value, underscoring the need for equitable terms.

### Guiding principles for an arrears clearance strategy
- Core principles:
  - Strategy must be transparent, equitable to suppliers, and mindful of resource availability.
  - Specify upfront resources available for clearing arrears; set realistic time frame, sequence, and modalities for repayment.
  - Prioritization criteria should be objective (socioeconomic impact, fiscal costs, contract age).
  - Ensure similar NPV terms regardless of modality to maintain evenhandedness.
- Preferred modalities (in order):
  - Cash payment from the budget if fiscal space is available (preferred, especially if stock is small or can be discounted via haircuts).
  - Absent cash, agree repayment schedules with suppliers combining haircuts and repayment terms—yielding equivalent NPV reduction as cash.
  - If suppliers prefer government-backed instruments, issue promissory notes or non-tradeable securities directly to suppliers.
  - Explore mixes (e.g., upfront “goodwill” cash payment to negotiate haircuts before agreeing repayment terms on remainder).
- Caution on securitization:
  - General securitization (marketable securities like T-bills or bonds, or discountable promissory notes) should be a last resort due to:
    - Moral hazard for financial managers.
    - Likelihood of securitized instruments trading at considerable discount, reducing supplier working capital.
    - High T-bill rates in Sierra Leone (currently over 20 percent), creating significant interest burden.
  - Using external grants to reduce existing stock of T-bills to lower interest rates is unlikely to be viable in practice.

### Evidence and illustrative scenarios for sustainable clearance
- Staff modeled scenarios showing need for deep NPV reductions to clear entire stock without undermining fiscal sustainability.
- Illustrative scenario (haircut-based) that clears most arrears by 2025 and fully by 2029:
  - Uses haircuts to generate NPV reductions; yields an implied additional fiscal burden in 2020 of 0.7 percent of non-iron ore GDP, falling gradually thereafter.
  - Table example: Arrears Portion 1 (Total Le 3,318 billion) treated with 55% haircut and rescheduled; Arrears Portion 2 (Le 200 billion) securitized 10 years, CPI+2%; total fiscal space needed by year: 2020 0.7, 2021 0.6, 2022 0.5, 2023 0.4, 2024 0.4, 2025 0.3, 2026-2029 0.1 (percent of non-iron ore GDP).
- Key operational recommendations:
  - Pursue deep NPV reductions broadly similar across suppliers to ensure equitable treatment.
  - Avoid piecemeal resolutions that could lock in unfavorable terms.
  - Publish an arrears clearance strategy and undertake robust PFM reforms to prevent future accumulation and strengthen negotiating position.
  - Mobilize highly concessional external resources where possible and combine with haircuts/rescheduling.

_Italic: Source — IMF staff note and chapter content from the provided Sierra Leone PDF unit._

### Box 2. Arrears Clearance Scenarios

### Box 2. Arrears Clearance Scenarios

### Simulated arrears clearance scenarios and headline findings
- Staff simulated a variety of arrears clearance scenarios—from zero interest rates to large haircuts, and a combination scenario. While these scenarios show some benefit, none are sufficient to avoid problems with fiscal sustainability and financial stability.
- Reducing interest rates for all creditors to zero:
  - Even assuming zero interest burden on claims, the immediate fiscal financing benefit would be limited.
  - The additional fiscal space needed would remain close to 2½ percent of GDP in 2020.
- Phasing the issuance of some securities and repayment schedules over 2020–21:
  - Helps to smooth the financing needs but still requires additional fiscal space of 1.6–2.2 percent of GDP per year during 2020-22.
  - Cash requirements remain similar to the zero-interest scenario.
- Applying a haircut of 25 percent to arrears (excluding unpaid checks):
  - Implies additional financing needs similar to the zero-interest scenario: 2.4 percent of GDP in 2020, 1.7 percent in 2021, and 1.2 percent in 2022, thus not achieving sustainability.
- Adding an upfront ‘goodwill’ payment to facilitate agreement on a 25 percent haircut:
  - Offers only a marginal benefit.
  - The overall fiscal cost increases in the short run given the cost of the upfront cash payment (assumed to be US$40 million).
  - The implied domestic financing needs remain unrealistically high given banking sector absorptive capacity.
- Combining phased issuance, 10-25% haircuts, and upfront goodwill payments:
  - Is better, but still does not secure an affordable or sustainable clearance scenario.
  - Additional fiscal space required averages around 1 percent of GDP per year during 2020-22.
  - Implied additional securitization in 2020 would exceed 1 percent of GDP, unlikely to be absorbed by the shallow banking sector.
  - The implied debt path is borderline sustainable, but highly susceptible to shocks.

### Illustrative fiscal space needed (in percent of non-iron ore GDP)
- Front-loaded heavy securitization: 2020 = 2.9; 2021 = 2.1; 2022 = 1.5; 2023 = 0.6; 2024 = 0.5; 2025 = 0.4. Is debt sustainable? No. Can market bear? No.
- Zero interest rate: 2020 = 2.5; 2021 = 1.8; 2022 = 1.2; 2023 = 0.4; 2024 = 0.4; 2025 = 0.1. Is debt sustainable? No. Can market bear? No.
- Phased Issuance: 2020 = 2.1; 2021 = 2.2; 2022 = 1.6; 2023 = 1.0; 2024 = 0.6; 2025 = 0.2. Is debt sustainable? No. Can market bear? No.
- Haircut: 2020 = 2.4; 2021 = 1.7; 2022 = 1.2; 2023 = 0.5; 2024 = 0.4; 2025 = 0.2. Is debt sustainable? No. Can market bear? No.
- Haircut with goodwill payment: 2020 = 3.1; 2021 = 1.5; 2022 = 0.9; 2023 = 0.4; 2024 = 0.3; 2025 = 0.1. Is debt sustainable? No. Can market bear? No.
- Combination of options: 2020 = 0.9; 2021 = 1.0; 2022 = 1.1; 2023 = 0.6; 2024 = 0.6; 2025 = 0.3. Is debt sustainable? Borderline. Can market bear? Borderline.

### Risks, external support needs, and sequencing
- Exchange rate risk and currency denomination considerations:
  - For foreign-currency denominated arrears, if the Government can negotiate rescheduling into domestic currency, it may be appropriate to seek NPV terms on par with most other creditors.
  - If rescheduling into domestic currency is not feasible, it may be necessary to accept a somewhat short repayment (higher NPV) to limit the Government’s foreign currency risk.
  - A preferable formulation in that case may be to negotiate a foreign currency-indexed amount, payable in domestic currency, to avoid disruptive spikes in demand for foreign currency.
- Need for concessional external support:
  - If the Government cannot secure sufficiently large NPV reductions, it will require further external support or be forced to tackle clearance in two separate waves.
  - Highly concessional external support—preferably grants—will be crucial to sustainably clearing arrears in Sierra Leone while also safeguarding priority expenditures.
  - This support will be even more urgent if suppliers are unwilling to accept large haircuts or if the impact on the banking sectors is larger than envisioned.
  - Absent sufficient concessional external support, the tight domestic financing situation could necessitate clearing arrears in two waves.

### Preventing further arrears accumulation — reforms and operational priorities
- Importance:
  - Preventing further accumulation of arrears is essential for the sustained success of the Government’s arrears clearance plan.
  - Suppliers and development partners are more likely to accept clearance terms if confident that arrears accumulation will not recur.
- Progress to date:
  - A large majority of MDAs (57 of 70) now use the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS), which controls commitments and record payments.
  - To facilitate cash management, most MDA accounts are consolidated in the Treasury Single Account.
  - On budgeting, efforts are underway to support MDAs on budget formulation, reduce delays in issuing quarterly budget warrants (commitment ceilings), and enforce the use of IFMIS to enter into commitments.
- Further required actions:
  - Realistic budgeting:
    - Adopt a top-down approach to budgeting where credible MDA ceilings, based on an available resource envelope and reflecting the scheduled clearance of arrears, are set at an early stage of the budget process.
    - Ensure a well-sequenced budget cycle that allows sufficient time for MDAs and their budget committees to prepare budget submissions, and for the Budget Bureau at the Ministry of Finance (MoF) to scrutinize and challenge these submissions.
    - Integrate multi-year commitments of ongoing capital projects into the budget to avoid under-funding.
  - More effective expenditure controls:
    - Control commitments effectively within IFMIS by automating and enforcing processes; current manual processes slow issuance of quarterly budget warrants and lead MDAs to commit outside IFMIS.
    - Address manual steps including PETS form submission/approval and collection/submission of quarterly project profiles by the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development (MoPED).
    - Interface IFMIS with the Bank of Sierra Leone and National Revenue Authority systems to automate transfer of payment orders and tax compliance checks, allowing faster processing of payments.
    - Roll out IFMIS to large spending agencies (e.g., Sierra Leone Road Authority, Road Maintenance Fund, National Medical Supply Agency) to reduce long manual chains; in the interim implement an Invoice Tracking System to speed up processing.
  - Robust cash and debt management:
    - Improve coordinated information sharing to make cash flows more predictable.
    - MoF currently prepares cash forecasts on a quarterly basis—with weekly updates—covering broad aggregates of revenue and non-discretionary expenditures such as wages and interest.
    - Incorporate information on projected external budget support, capital expenditure flows (provided by MoPED), and other discretionary expenditures (provided by MDAs through PETS) to enhance forecasts.
    - Strengthen the role of the Cash Management Committee to better identify future peaks and troughs in cash flows, allowing the MoF to prepare financing plans and make future cash flows more predictable.

*Source: Box 2. Arrears Clearance Scenarios (IMF).*

### 12.      Vulnerability to external shocks adds to the challenging macroeconomic environment.

### 12.      Vulnerability to external shocks adds to the challenging macroeconomic environment.

### External vulnerability and exchange rate risks
- Sierra Leone relies heavily on imported goods and services (30 percent of GDP), implying potentially high exchange rate passthrough.
- Reserve coverage was preliminarily at 3.5 months of imports as of end-December 2019.
- Real exchange rate overvaluation is assessed to be in the order of 20-30 percent, implying that depreciation pressures could quickly place pressure on reserve adequacy.
- Shocks to the external sector will likely have a significant impact on inflation, complicating inflation management.

### Effectiveness of monetary policy
- Shallow financial markets weaken the Monetary Policy Rate’s (MPR) influence on household and business activity:
  - The small share of domestic credit to the private sector limits the role of interest rates in affecting private demand.
  - There is a disconnect between the MPR and interest rates relevant for consumption and investment decisions.
- Empirical relationships cited:
  - A 100-basis point increase in the MPR is associated with a 54-75 basis points increase in Treasury bills in the same month.
  - The same 100-basis point MPR increase is associated with only a 7-8 basis points increase in deposit and lending rates with a one-month lag.
- Resulting dynamics:
  - The MPR affects aggregate demand mainly through the public sector by influencing government borrowing costs.
  - The association between money aggregates growth and inflation is weak in the short run:
    - The past decade shows similar growth rates of money aggregates despite rapid inflation increases since 2015.
  - After 2015, there was a sharp rise in the central bank’s net credit to government (a component of base money) that coincided with the surge in inflation.
    - The correlation between inflation and net credit to government as a share of base money is 0.90 between January 2011 and March 2019.
- Under fiscal dominance:
  - The central bank is often required to finance fiscal needs directly or indirectly, monetizing deficits and increasing money supply and inflation.
  - Higher interest rates from tighter monetary policy raise government debt service burden, potentially prompting fiscal pressure on the central bank to adopt less-tight policies.
  - Controlling money growth to contain inflation, while under pressure to finance the deficit and build international reserves, squeezes credit to the private sector.
  - Credit to the private sector is hovering at around 5 percent of GDP, limiting near-term strengthening of price-based monetary transmission.
- Reserve money targeting:
  - Appropriate in the near term to anchor inflation by setting quantitative limits on reserve money growth and serving monitoring roles in Fund-supported programs.
  - Limitations include weak short-run correlation between money aggregates growth and inflation and potential volatility in short-term interest rates from liquidity shocks, hampering transmission.

### Priority policy areas for improvement
- Overarching objective: nurture an enabling macro-financial environment alongside technical building blocks to enhance monetary policy effectiveness.
- Curtailing fiscal dominance (first and crucial step):
  - Reduce central bank financing to government to break the cycle of loss of control over liquidity, rising inflation, and increased government borrowing from the central bank.
  - High returns on government securities discourage commercial bank lending to the private sector, stalling market development.
  - Government commitment to put the fiscal deficit on a sustainable path, in line with the Fund-supported program, is fundamental.
- Parallel institutional and operational reforms to enable market-based monetary policy:
  - Establish operational independence of the central bank, strengthen commercial banks’ role in intermediation, foster interbank market development, and diversify markets; sequence reforms and align incentives among participants.
- Well-sequenced technical building blocks (specific areas for progress):
  - Establish sound institutional and governance setting for the central bank:
    - The new BSL Act provides the legal framework to reinforce independence; effective implementation and political commitment are crucial.
    - If de facto independence is not immediate, a joint determination of medium-term inflation objectives by government and BSL can help insulate the objective from political pressures, while the BSL should retain sole responsibility for achieving the inflation objective.
    - Monetary policy cannot force banks to lend; it can stabilize the financial environment but not compel lending behavior.
  - Transition to a hybrid operational framework:
    - Rely on reserve money as the primary operating target while enhancing control of short-term interest rates—a hybrid of monetary targeting and interest rate targeting—to reduce interest rate volatility.
    - Stabilize excess reserves and keep reserve balances on the target path as a first objective.
    - The interest rate corridor introduced in 2016 helped limit rate volatility and strengthened signaling between the policy rate and interbank rates.
  - Strengthen monetary policy implementation framework:
    - Gradually set up comprehensive operations for injecting (draining) liquidity when there is shortage (excess) in the banking system.
    - Foreign exchange operations should aim to smooth excess exchange rate volatility or achieve foreign exchange reserve targets.
  - Enhance analytical capacity:
    - Continue strengthening capacity to interpret data timely and produce model-based medium-term forecasts, in line with recommendations in recent technical assistance (IMF 2019).
    - Statistics Sierra Leone should strengthen the quality of inflation data and collaborate closely with the BSL for accurate interpretation and inflation outlook assessment.
  - Establish a forward-looking and effective communication strategy:
    - Develop a transparent forward-looking monetary policy strategy reflecting timely and comprehensive assessments of the monetary transmission mechanism, including lags with which policy affects output, inflation, and exchange rate.
    - Enhance predictability of the financial environment through improved communication, especially when adjusting forecasts and targets.

*Source: IMF staff chapter on Sierra Leone (section 12–21).*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/cr/2020/english/1sleea2020002.pdf_