Table 10: State and Region Budget Units and Constitutional Assignments
Departments Appearing in State and Region Budget Schedule I (Union) Schedule II
(State/Region) Residual/ Uncertain
General Administration Department
Special Investigation Department
Prison Department
Settlements and Land records Department
Department of Agriculture
Department of Industrial Crops Development
Cooperative Office
Department of Small Scale Industries
Fisheries Department
Department of Livestock and Veterinary
Department of Beekeeping
Department of Human Settlement and Housing Development
Maintenance of Buildings, Roads, and Bridges
Public Construction
Budget Department
Department of Planning
Central Stevedoring Committee
Forestry Department
Dry Zone Green Project Development
Department of Sports and Physical Education
Water Transport Development
Municipals
Myanmar Film Making
Myanmar Salt and Marine Chemical Enterprise
Myanmar Pharmaceutical and Foodstuff Industry
Home Utilities Industry
Source: Nixon et al 2013.
Revenue assignments are set out in Schedule V of the Constitution. There are 19 tax headings under the schedule but currently the region and state governments are allowed to collect under nine headings, while the budget headings indicate only seven sources of tax revenues: excise tax, land tax, embankment tax, forestry tax, mining tax, lakes/streams tax, and municipal tax. The total amount of taxes collected from these sources by region and state governments is currently about 4% of total government revenues, with variations from 13% in Mandalay Region to 0.7% to Rakhine State, a reflection in part of the differing levels of economic development across states and regions.17 For almost all states and regions, the municipal tax is either the first or the second most important revenue source. International experience suggests that local governments should be assigned stable sources of revenue that are easy to administer and clearly separable across different local jurisdictions; and commonly agreed examples of such sources include: real estate property taxes, retail sales taxes, business fees, motor vehicle fees, and user charges. From this perspective, the current list of local taxes for Myanmar would seem to be a good beginning, but will need to be reviewed in the context of the overall reform of the government’s tax policy as well as the future directions for decentralization. Of
particular importance will be the outcome of the peace negotiations and any agreements reached in that context on sharing of natural resource wealth.
Since the assignment of revenue sources rarely provides local governments with sufficient revenues to fund their expenditure functions, intergovernmental transfers are often necessary. This is the case in Myanmar, where there are currently two types of unconditional/conditional transfer: grants for poverty reduction, under which one billion kyat was distributed in FY2012 evenly to all regions and states (except for Chin State, which receives three times more than other regions and states because of its high poverty rate and difficult transportation situation); and other grants primarily for the purpose of helping regions and states “balance their books” (Figure 4). In total, these two types of transfers are very small and are far outweighed by the funding provided directly by union ministries. The system of intergovernmental transfers does, however, require a major review, (the World Bank (2013) has noted that it is “neither rules-based nor transparent”) and in this regard, Myanmar can draw on a wealth of international experience of use for such transfers, including “vertical” or “horizontal” balance, funding specific national priorities, counteracting effects of interregional spillovers or externalities, etc., the form in which such transfers are made (conditional or unconditional), and some universally accepted principles of transfer design (Box 8). The development of the transfer system in Myanmar will also be crucially dependent on broader decisions taken with respect to decentralization, including how much subnational spending will be achieved through deconcentration versus devolution to regions and states, and how natural resource wealth is to be shared.