Balancing Capital and Recurrent Expenditures
Public expenditures can be categorized into capital and recurrent expenditures. Capital expenditures include expenses for building roads, bridges, universities, hospitals, and clinics, etc.; whereas, recurrent expenditures include wages and salaries, maintenance and repairs, interest payments, etc. As can be seen in Figure 2, Myanmar’s ratio of recurrent expenditures to GDP has been lower than that of neighbors, suggesting that further real growth in recurrent expenditures will be both feasible and desirable.