Effective Communication and Public Engagement in Fiscal Policies Increasingly Crucial in Their Success: IMF Paper

Frontiers of Economic Policy Communications, by Olga Ilinichna Stankova

The paper provides an overall view of communications across various areas of economic policy, aiming to help country authorities as they increasingly use communications as a policy tool in its own right. The paper identifies frontier communications challenges, drawing on a large body of research on the salient issues. Although communications can never be a substitute for good policies, economic reforms are more likely to fail or even be reversed if they are not understood or accepted by those whom they affect.

In particular, the areas covered by the paper are the changing landscape and growing role of communications in monetary policy, financial stability, fiscal reform, economic crisis and restoring trust, and how to build communications capacity.

Communications to support fiscal reforms-political economy

Since fiscal policy is ‘intrinsically political’ due to its distributive nature, and fiscal issues can be difficult for the general public to understand due to their intricacies and complexity, the paper advises disclosure, transparency, communication and citizen engagement to help improve the design, implementation, success and sustainability of fiscal reforms.

Source: IMF 2019, Frontiers of economic policy communications

On this area, the paper focuses on the role of communications in supporting public participation in the Budget process, the communication of fiscal rules and of deeper structural reforms of public finances, such as pension reform or energy subsidy reform.

(Source: Departmental Paper No. 19/08 | IMF Blog)