Benin: Selected Issues

This Selected Issues paper on Benin focuses on scaling up public expenditure for inclusive growth. Poverty and inequality remain relatively high in Benin despite robust economic growth over the past decade, partly reflecting the fact that public spending on education, health and social protection has not kept up with demographic trends. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals will require significant increases in public spending going forward. Underspending on public health sector reflects low budget appropriations and weak implementation of capital expenditure. School enrollment rates have overall improved, with significant variations across education levels. Benchmarking and frontier analyses, respectively, suggest that there is scope to increase the level of spending on education and its efficiency. At the sectoral level, many measures could be considered to improve the inclusiveness of the government intervention. Scaling up public spending, while preserving fiscal sustainability, is needed to address large social and infrastructure gaps.