Issues in the Use of Debt Relief Savings in the Social Sectors

Debt Relief Under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative A Factsheet

Issues in the Use of Debt Relief Savings in the Social Sectors Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative
Review Seminar
United Nations Conference Center
Economic Commission for Africa

Addis Ababa
July 29-30, 1999

Peter S. Heller, Deputy Director
Fiscal Affairs Department, International Monetary Fund
and
Christian Schiller, Deputy Division Chief
Fiscal Affairs Department, International Monetary Fund

Introduction

Adequate and universal access to basic social services contributes to the development of human capital and can be an important factor that can underlie a reduction in poverty. Enhanced access to basic education and primary health care is also a critical dimension of equity. Fund programs have for at least a decade recognized the importance of maintaining adequate public spending on these elements of the education and health sectors during economic adjustment.

There would thus be little argument within the Fund that increased public spending on the social sectors, if well focused, can promote both economic growth and equity.¹ This is a fortiori the case in countries where this spending is low. This underscores the importance of recent initiatives to consider applying the savings from debt relief for an increase in spending on education and health in HIPC countries. This is particularly the case given that the average level of both education and health care spending in terms of GDP, and progression in social indicators in these countries lags behind other countries.

It is realistic to seek the realization of such objectives, as would be reflected in higher growth in social sector outlays in real per capita terms. Indeed, in the context of IMF programs, growth in education and health care spending in HIPC countries has been higher, on average, than in other countries with IMF-supported programs in recent years. But such results are not a cause for complacency. The averages mask the fact that in some countries real per capita spending has declined and in some regions the increases have been relatively low. In particular, the average annual rate of increase in real education spending per capita in Sub-Saharan Africa has lagged behind other program countries. The countries where real per capita spending on education has declined are the Comoros, the Republic of Congo, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, and Sierra Leone. In health care, the countries comprise the Comoros, Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, Madagascar, and Zambia.

In my presentation, I want to perhaps, underscore the obvious -viz., that long experience in efforts at development suggest the complexity of what we are trying to do--to achieve significant reductions in poverty helped by the use of the resources freed by debt relief. This is a plea for realism in our expectations as to what can be accomplished, particularly over the next few years. In what follows, I will make the following key points, some quite briefly:

the fiscal framework for aid can accommodate higher social spending as a result of debt relief;

realizing higher social spending is a desirable target, recognizing however that this is only an intermediate objective. But there is a large gap between more social expenditures and the realization of better social outcomes and reduced poverty rates; more social spending may not be the best way to reduce poverty and even if it is, the translation into more effective and expanded programs targeted at the poor will be an enormous challenge for all the major players--be it IFIs, bilateral donors, or government ministries and their civil servants;

despite their intuitive appeal, there are many risks and dangers associated with poverty funds--they are not necessarily the correct answer; and

beyond the challenge of devising appropriate policies for poverty reduction, the task of measuring what are we are doing and what we are trying to accomplish is itself a major task, that will require sustained efforts.

In giving my views, I will also draw on three papers that have recently been done in the Fund's Fiscal Affairs Department on public spending on the social sectors and which have been distributed to the conference participants.

The Fiscal Framework for Aid

Let me first make it clear that we in the IMF are open to flexibility within the fiscal framework to try to accommodate the higher social expenditures that can be financed from debt relief. We are working with the World Bank to ensure a coordinated perspective on this issue. Our concern, of course, is to ensure macroeconomic stability (see Appendix I).

This means worrying about whether increased outlays and a higher fiscal deficit may have an inflationary impact or whether the higher deficit can be sustainably financed in terms of the balance of payments. This means ensuring that the flow of additional resources to the budget can be counted upon in future years, so as to avoid sharp fluctuations in expenditure programs or unsustainable financial commitments in terms of meeting the cost of operating and maintaining social programs. The HIPC Initiative relief--which can be considered a precommitment of aid flows--has desirable characteristics from this perspective, particularly if one can be assured of the additionality of aid flows. In approaching the issue, the Fund shall not argue that fiscal deficits must necessarily be reduced by the amount of debt relief received. Flexibility and seeing what can be accommodated should be our watchword as we construct the macroeconomic framework.

The Challenges confronting efforts to make social expenditures effective in reducing poverty.

There appears to be a considerable consensus that much of the savings from debt relief should be channeled toward higher levels of social expenditure. Concerns over fungibility of the budgetary resources are also well-recognized, requiring that an overall perspective on the allocation of budgetary resources across all parts of the government budget is maintained. Observing significant increases in unproductive expenditure, or transfers and quasi-fiscal outlays to middle or upper income groups, even with an increase in social sector outlays, needs to be examined carefully.

But higher social expenditures are not a goal in themselves. We want to see desirable outcomes in terms of real social indicators and reduced poverty rates. If successful, higher social expenditure may lead to an improvement in social indicators, and contribute to enhanced social outcomes. But it needs to be recognized that numerous factors other than government outlays will have an impact on social indicators. These include the level of private spending in the social sectors, per capita income, demographic trends, and the effectiveness of the outlays themselves. Moreover, targeting of expenditures toward social outlays and improvements in social indicators does not necessarily translate into a fundamental reduction in the number of poor households ore the extent of poverty. ² The poor have to combine the benefits from improved basic social services with income-earning opportunities to cross the poverty threshold. The challenges faced by those charged with designing poverty reduction programs-- principally our colleagues in the World Bank in cooperation in our national authorities and civil society--is thus particularly great.

In particular, all evidence suggests that growth is probably the most important instrument for achieving poverty reduction in any meaningful way. And one would be misleading if one did not ask the question of which types of public expenditures are most likely to contribute to enhanced growth and thus poverty reduction? Social outlays, however well targeted to the poor? Spending on new technologies in agriculture? Provision of infrastructure--rural feeder roads? Irrigation networks? Enhanced access to clean water supplies? Some would even say that enhancing a country's ability to interact in the world's rapidly globalizing electronic economy should be the focus! The answers of course will differ, depending on the country involved, implying the need for informed country-specific strategies.

The need for caution also arises from the lack of hard evidence as to whether aggregate public spending on education and health care has a beneficial impact on the relevant social indicators. The evidence is mixed. While some studies have found that public spending on health care and education can contribute to an improvement in social outcomes--e.g., levels of educational attainment or the health status of the population--recent research at the Fund suggests little empirical evidence to support the claim that public spending improves education and health indicators. Our study used an up-to-date cross-sectional data of public spending and social indicators for 50 developing and transition countries to show that it was the allocations of expenditure within the two social sectors (rather than the overall amounts) that mattered, improving both access to and enhanced levels of attainment in schools and reducing mortality rates for infants and children.

Similarly, despite the social spending increases mentioned above, progress in social indicators in ESAF countries and HIPCs has not been commensurate.

Even if public spending has proved effective in fostering a strengthening of these indicators, this may not be matched by what one really wants to see--namely, desirable social outcomes in terms of improved health, far fewer poor, and material improvements in the living standards of the poor. For example, expanded access to health care, as judged by substantial coverage of immunization programs against measles for children under 12 months, does not necessarily imply a low infant mortality rate. Zambia, for example, has a higher immunization coverage than Kenya, but also a higher infant mortality rate. For a group of 14 program countries in sub-Saharan Africa for which latest data are available, immunization coverage is not related to infant mortality

In sum, increasing social spending alone may not be enough to achieve better social outcomes. Even if we could ensure that the savings from debt relief result in significantly higher government outlays in the social sectors, we must then address what the amounts are spent on, and how efficiently these allocations are spent and targeted to the poor. In many low-income countries, there remains tremendous scope for improving the efficiency of existing spending.

The Composition of Social Spending

As mentioned above, the intra-sectoral composition of public spending on education and health care matters. We know the imbalances that can arise across levels of education, or in the focus of educational efforts at any level. Similar examples can be provided in virtually in every social sector, and not surprisingly, each country seems to display its own idiosyncratic inefficiencies and distortions. What is important is to recognize the significant efficiency losses that can arise, and the low productivity that can be associated with simply higher pro rata expenditures. Our research suggests that this is certainly the case in the education sector. For example, we found that a 5 percentage point increase in the share of outlays for primary and secondary education increased gross secondary enrollment by one percentage point. With regard to the health sector, we found that a similar increase in the share of primary health care spending can decrease infant mortality rates by 2.3 per 1,000 live births and child mortality rates by 4.9 per 1,000 children under 5 years of age.

Equally, the mix of inputs going into education and health care spending matters. We are all aware of the imbalances often observed between the amounts spent on teachers' salaries, textbook supplies and equipment, and maintenance of school buildings, and the consequences this may pose for the quality of what ends up happening in the classroom. Too many teachers crowding out budgetary funds that could be used to purchase textbooks for students translates into an inefficient composition of spending. Again, the answers are not always obvious--in some countries, expanding the supply of teachers is necessary to achieve manageable classroom sizes; in other African countries, excessive investments in teacher training have fostered an over supply of teachers, too few students in a classroom, and no resources for anything else.

Statistical analysis suggests the inefficiency that can arise in government expenditure. For example, there are wide disparities in the cost-effectiveness of government spending on education and health across countries in Africa. In one recent Fund study, we attempted to assess the efficiency of government spending on health and education in sample countries in Africa, both relative to each other and to sample countries in Asia and the Western Hemisphere. The results suggest wide disparities in the cost-effectiveness of government spending on education and health across countries in Africa. For instance, health and education spending in Gambia, Guinea, Ethiopia, and Lesotho is associated with relatively high educational attainment and health output. Contrary results emerged for Botswana, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, and Kenya. The results also indicate that, on average, governments in the African countries are less efficient in the provision of health and education services than in the countries in Asia and the Western Hemisphere.

Institutions and actors also matter with the social sector. With all the best will in the world, Ministers of Education or of Health are confronted with long-standing bureaucracies and institutional approaches within a sector that may not be compatible with a singular or dedicated focus on poverty reduction. Reorienting institutional approaches is a challenging, but necessary task; the long experience of donor involvement suggests that going around these institutions only further complicates sectoral policies, and results in duplication and inefficiencies.

I would also note that even the conventional wisdom on priorities in the social sector can prove extreme and lead to misleading conclusions. In the health sector, we are all aware of the importance of preventive and primary health care. But I am reminded of a recent lecture by one of the more distinguished experts on public health issues in developing countries, Prof. William Hsiao of Harvard, who stressed that one cannot ignore the importance of some government spending on curative care at secondary and tertiary hospitals. Certainly a surprising observation. His reasoning? First, because the capacity of a society to address instances of major illness is something that people--poor people as well as rich--want, and will seek and demand. Hsiao stresses that cases of major illness may prove one of the major sources of impoverishment of families in developing countries--as they deplete their savings and sell their assets to obtain medical care. So, how much of the debt relief should go to curative care? The simple answer may be none--focus on preventive and primary care. But this may not be an answer that any democratically elected government may wish to own as policy.

Can we target social expenditures to the poor more effectively?

Increased public spending should be accompanied by improved targeting of health and education outlays to the poor. Directing the benefits of government spending to high-income groups obviously tends to promote inequity and inefficiency in government spending. Yet, the latest available data on overall education and health care spending for up to 26 countries with an IMF-supported program indicate that such spending is still not well targeted to the poor. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, benefits from education and health care spending that accrue to households in the poorest quintile amount, on average, to 14 percent and 12 percent, respectively, compared with 30 percent for the richest quintile for both. The difference is particularly great for spending on secondary and tertiary education and hospital care.

Targeting of social spending to the poor is particularly relevant in the HIPC context, where an enhancement of the access of the poor to basic social services is high on the policy agenda. For instance, a shift in spending from large urban health facilities to primary health facilities in more disadvantaged, possibly rural areas, is likely to improve the targeting of social spending in favor of the poor. Or perhaps more practically, the focus of new, additional spending should, in most countries, be in the rural areas.

The challenges of more effective targeting are not new however. Both the Fund and the Bank have accumulated significant experience, in the context of designing social safety net schemes in the context of adjustment programs, to know ways of doing it--through the self selection of public works programs, location of facilities and subsidy programs, types of services provided, etc. So in this area, I believe we can be optimistic, but there is much to be done.

Is there a role for poverty funds as a means of targeting?

The Concept

Poverty and social funds, as defined by the World Bank, are "agencies that finance small projects in several sectors targeted to benefit a country's poor and vulnerable groups based on participatory manner of demand generated by local groups and screened against a set of eligibility criteria." There has been an explosive growth of poverty and social funds in developing countries since the establishment of the first internationally known fund in Bolivia in 1987 (since then, the World Bank has financed 71 social fund projects). Conceptually, but not always in practice, the positive aspects of these funds are their flexibility to finance small projects, diversity, participatory character, targeting on the poor, low administrative costs, and public accountability (see Appendix II on the Uganda fund).

Issues

Poverty Funds could be a useful instrument for channeling the savings from debt relief to social expenditure. However, there are a number of issues that need to be taken into consideration while designing such funds:

Given the fungibility of resources, there is a risk that expenditures from a poverty fund could merely substitute for other expenditures within the government's budget, particularly if donors decide to shift existing budget support to a poverty fund.

The creation of specialized or earmarked funds that assume a significant role in the budget may undermine the process of improving overall fiscal transparency and strengthening expenditure management and governance.

Creation of special funds may complicate the task of ensuring an adequate focus of spending in priority areas, drawing upon all available resources. Funds released as a consequence of debt relief need to be integrated into an overall budgetary framework that aims to safeguard macroeconomic stability and give priority to essential social spending. Because of their operational autonomy, several funds have ended up running as almost parallel governments, confusing beneficiaries and not contributing to capacity building.

Expenditure policy decisions by the poverty fund may also contradict decision-making by the rest of the public sector, resulting in duplication and a lack of complementarity.

Lack of sustainability of spending by poverty funds has emerged as a problem in some countries, particularly for social and economic infrastructure projects.

Special funds, whose control is outside the normal budgetary process, often add pressures for higher remuneration levels than are possible for civil servants, thereby complicating the key task of establishing a rational wage structure for the public sector (e.g., experience with Bolivia's Emergency Social Fund-(ESF)).

Poverty funds are often praised for their demand-driven character, in which projects are designed on the basis of the needs of the poor. However, in Brazil, it was found that such funds were mostly supply-driven, with project choices and designs often not decided by communities, but by private firms, politicians, and staff of the poverty fund.

Finally, and most important, poverty funds may not succeed in reaching the poorest. In Bolivia, concerns about insufficient targeting led to replacement of the existing poverty fund (ESF) by two new poverty funds (SIFs I and II) in the mid-1990s, which were designed to be less autonomous, and take account of regional patterns of poverty in their allocations.

Thus, poverty funds can play a useful role in a poverty reduction framework, provided they are fully integrated within the overall fiscal and macroeconomic policy framework of the country. This would imply an incorporation of their accounts in the national budget, consistency of their project financing with the priorities of the main components of social and economic spending in the budget, and a personnel policy in line with the rest of the government.

Monitoring of Expenditure, Social Indicators and Social Outcomes

Finally, we are embarked on a process where good intentions are not sufficient. We want to judge commitment and performance against real indicators of outcome on the most fundamental social indicators. We want to see what outcomes ensue from higher expenditures.

Thus, the timeliness, coverage, and reliability of data are critical for designing, monitoring, and assessing expenditure policies and their impact on social outcomes. Unfortunately, there are many important deficiencies in data for public spending on health and education that hamper our work. For example, spending undertaken by local governments is often not included in the fiscal data; this can be a major handicap in countries that have devolved or are devolving expenditure responsibilities to lower levels of the government. Similarly, in many cases, data coverage in fiscal accounts is limited to current outlays only. This is partly due to the inability of governments to separate donor-financed capital spending by function. And extrabudgetary, donor financed, in-kind contributions to education and health care are not included.

The expenditure data typically become available with a lag. In some countries the lag can be as long as 2-3 years, making it difficult to judge performance with the speed that may be desirable or appropriate in the envisaged HIPC framework.

Problems of availability of data are equally acute with respect to social indicators. Since the early 1990s, various global UN conferences have established goals for social policies and several sets of social indicators have been identified to assess social development and monitor key social development goals. We are supportive of these efforts. However, there is no consensus in international fora on the precise composition of social indicators to be used for assessing development and social performance.³

The most serious shortcoming of data on social indicators is that they are generally produced infrequently and with a long lag, or, in many cases, are not collected at all. Some of the prominent indicators (illiteracy and child mortality rates) become available only every five years. For example, no data are available later than 1985 for infant mortality--a basic social indicator--for 102 countries. This excludes model-based or other estimated data and projections prepared by international organizations, and included in World Development indicators of the World Bank.

Efforts are underway to improve the monitoring on social outcomes. I would like to note that with the support of the World Bank, a few countries have recently established mechanisms to monitor social outcomes on an on-going basis (e.g. the Social Monitoring and Early Response Unit in Indonesia). Also, the Bank is currently experimenting with quick surveys in sub-Saharan African countries, which is welcome. For example, in Ghana, preliminary results for the whole country, based on a quick survey, were available within three months after the fieldwork had started.

However, fundamentally, the data quality to a large extent depends on the national statistical capacity. Because social indicators are constructed using data at the national level through censuses, sample surveys, and administrative records, the data quality to a large extent depends on the national statistical capacity. So beyond the design of poverty action plans, attention must be paid to a strengthening of countries' capacities to measure and monitor social indicators and poverty conditions.

In closing, one can only applaud the ambitiousness of the agenda that has been called by the international community in relation to the objectives of the HIPC Initiative. Certainly, there is much to commend efforts to ensure that the savings from debt relief are focussed on outlays that can contribute to achieving a meaningful reduction in the poverty rate and enhancing the health and educational status of the youngest generations in these countries. The Fund, for its part, can seek to both design a macroeconomic framework that is consistent with macroeconomic stability and provides for enhanced and effective fiscal outlays on World Bank and nationally-generated programs for poverty reduction. One can only hope that this framework will see the necessary degree of collaboration between country authorities and the community of IFI's, donors, and NGO's so that the many difficult issues of program and policy design that will inevitably emerge can be creatively resolved. A division of labor will certainly be necessary: the Fund, focussing principally on macroeconomic adjustment issues, the Bank on providing expertise in the design of poverty reduction action plans compatible with high economic growth, governments in fostering domestic debate and developing an action plan that can be genuinely owned by society, and donors, in ensuring adequate additionality and support for the poverty reduction action plans that are being developed.

Appendix I

The Fiscal Framework for Aid

What is the Fiscal Framework for Aid?

The proposal being put forward, in a nutshell, calls for assessing recipient countries' financing needs from a fiscal perspective, as an alternative to the traditional balance-of-payment approach. An ex-ante fiscal financing gap would be calculated by subtracting revenue collections from a desirable level of public spending.

The model used is not very different from the set of equations used in the balance of payments (BoP) approach, except for the starting point (fiscal deficit versus BoP deficit) and the level of detail (higher in the theoretical fiscal framework for aid (FFA), including, for example, complete economic and functional classifications, and complete information on aid flows and their use and on the breakdown of externally financed capital spending). The proponents of the FFA approach assert that, with respect to the BoP approach, the FFA would provide donors with a better understanding of financing requirements, the manner in which aid is used, and the impact of shocks on the economy. The FFA would allow donors to make allocation decisions on the basis of the recipient country's medium-term fiscal plans, in turn related to growth, poverty reduction, and other social objectives. In practice, this would mean that aid decisions would be based on the ex-ante fiscal financing gap.

Issues

The argument that the developmental focus of the FFA is an advantage over the traditional BoP approach is questionable. While it may be true that the BoP approach may focus on the need to compensate for external shocks in the short term, most calculations of external financing gaps for ESAF countries are done in a medium-term context with articulated goals for growth. The BoP approach also takes into account the need to put a country on a path of fiscal sustainability.

The proponents of the FFA give the impression that the FFA can provide a number of new `insights' now precluded by the standard IMF macroeconomic approach. In this context, the FFA approach relies heavily on detailed information on aid flows and their use to be included in the budget. Often, however, this information is not available. Substantial difficulties exist--resulting in part from the wide array of financial arrangements used by donors with regard to disbursement and reporting--in measuring and reporting aid (particularly grants). On one side, recipient countries, given scarce human resources, do not have the incentive to collect the necessary information. On the other side, donor countries do not feel obliged to provide the necessary information to the recipient county in a systematic fashion.

Information is typically provided to the end-users, either a particular program or a line ministry, but not to the Ministry of Finance (MoF). Other difficulties include the measuring of grants and aid-in-kind, of donors' payments to foreign suppliers directly on behalf of the recipient country, and the donors' practice of setting up special projects accounts, sometime in the central bank, but more often in a commercial bank, for all project disbursements and payments. These are often kept outside the government accounts and bypass normal accounting procedures. In all these cases, the governments depend on information supplied by donors to monitor the implementation and financing of projects.

Although proponents of the FFA would expect the FFA to produce a different macroeconomic framework, including a more expansionary fiscal policy stance, the two approaches may often result in similar macroeconomic programs including fiscal policy stances.

The proponents of the FFA suggest that it may act as a panacea in solving most of the accountability and transparency problems in budget preparation and execution in sub-Saharan African countries. In fact, application of the model by itself would not solve any of these issues. These problems should be addressed through improved expenditure management practices.

Additional grant inflows and fiscal targets

The Fund has been seen by some donors as unduly constraining the use of foreign grant inflows for additional government spending. Donors have argued for a full accommodation of new grants by an equivalent easing of fiscal targets. Grant financed spending should be an add-on to the fiscal deficit. This, however, would entail substantial risks of missing program targets.

An economy which has designed a consistent stabilization program, then receives additional grants, but nonetheless wishes to maintain its original inflation/exchange and interest rate/balance of payments targets, will need to reconfigure the program in the following cases:

if the grants put pressure on domestic demand (i.e., if they are used to purchase non-tradable goods or services, employ factors, or increase the money supply).

if the grants are linked to additional government outlays (typically, governments cannot achieve full disbursement of a grant without some own contribution).

if the grants give rise to recurrent costs in the present or future years (for instance, maintenance of donated hospitals or infrastructure, the continuation of an income-support program).

if the grants are temporary, but create expectations of a permanently higher level of spending.

In the above cases, full accommodation of new grants by an equivalent easing of fiscal targets would cause program targets to be missed. Few countries' grants come unfettered by at least some of these expansionary factors.

Appendix II

The HIPC Initiative and Poverty Reduction in Uganda

Uganda has a Poverty Eradication Plan that aims to reduce the percentage of the population that lives in absolute poverty from 66.3 percent in 1993/94 to 10 percent by the year 2017.

The Poverty Eradication Plan relies on: macroeconomic stability; measures to increase the incomes of the poor; and measures to improve the quality of life of the poor.

A Poverty Action Fund (PAF) was established in 1997 to direct funds from the HIPC Initiative, together with other resources mobilized from donors, to finance projects that have a "very strong impact in terms of poverty reduction." The PAF is part of the budgetary framework and its expenditures are subject to Parliamentary control.

In FY1998/99, U Sh 57 billion was budgeted for the Fund, and U Sh 83 billion was actually spent; funds generated through savings under the HIPC Initiative were equal to the projected U Sh 45 billion, while additional support from donors was thrice the original projection. For 1999/00, the U Sh 153 billion were budgeted for the PAF, reflecting HIPC savings of U Sh 66 billion and U Sh 74 billion in additional donor contributions.

The PAF finances three main sets of programs. First, measures to increase incomes and productivity in rural areas (road construction and maintenance, agricultural extension, microfinance, etc.). Second, measures to develop human resources (primary health care, primary education, water supply, etc.). Third, measures to improve the accountability of the PAF programs; these are done through the offices of the Inspector General, Auditor General, and Treasury Office.

The above measures under the PAF have been mainstays of recommendations from the Bank and the Fund regarding poverty reduction, and hence, are not exactly novel. What is notable about the case of Uganda is the following:

The authorities have a well-defined poverty reduction program and have evidenced significant commitment to its implementation.

The authorities have explicitly identified financing for these poverty-reduction programs, and have channeled HIPC Initiative relief to the measures.

Financing, however, is fungible. Although social spending has steadily increased under Fund-supported programs, and has continued to increase since Uganda qualified for the HIPC Initiative completion point, military spending has also significantly increased, in connection with the hostilities in the Congo.

¹A forthcoming paper to the IMF Board will discuss the way in which issues of social policy have been addressed by the IMF.
²As an aside, one must note that an extreme focus on the improvement of simple indicators of poverty can lead to efforts directed at the near poor or those temporarily in poverty rather than the structural poor.
³We can note the OECD/DAC working set of core indicators, those identified under the auspices of the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF/CCA), the UN's Minimum National Social Dataset (MNSDS) and those of the United Nations Task Force on Basic Social Services for all.