Selected Issues Papers

Stock-flow adjustments—extra-budgetary and below-the-line operations that do not reflect standard spending and revenue—have added 9 percentage points to the debt-to-GDP ratio in Mali over the past decade. That is just under a third of the total increase in public debt over that period. Despite their importance, there is little understanding of the causes of stock-flow adjustments. A number of actions could be taken to either reduce the occurrence of stock-flow adjustments or to increase transparency and monitoring which would assist fiscal policy decision-making.