before Anjouan in 1997, though they re-integrated with the Union in 1998. While the island rights movements have been quite strong, the separatist sentiments are not nearly as strong as those in Anjouan.

There has been substantial resistance by the various actors at the national government to decentralization. With the approval of the Constitution of 2001, the government established the Autonomous Island Governments of Anjouan, Moheli and Ngazidja, providing these governments with extensive powers in a quite devolved system of government. This Constitution worked under the subsidiary principle, in which the national government held a small set of defined responsibilities, and the rest passed on to the island governments – at least in the law. It also provided for the financial autonomy of the island governments. The constitutional reforms of 2009, approved soon after the conflict in Anjuoan, transformed these power sharing arrangements, representing a general recentralization of power: it annulled the subsidiary principle by defining a set of responsibilities for island governments, and also demoted the island “Presidents” to governors. Informally, there was also substantial resistance to decentralization, with many central government officials refusing to be transferred to the island government. The recentralization of island financial decisions, concurrent with the overall movement towards recentralization, is discussed below.

# **Civil service recruitment and governance in Comoros**

In recent years, Comoros has seen a large increase in both the overall sum of the wage bill and the number of public servants. From 2001 to 2012, the number of members of the civil service more than doubled, from approximately 6,500 to up to 13,500 in 2012.<sup>4,5</sup> At the same time, the wage bill is quite large, even relative to other African nations, as exhibited by Chart 3.1.

**_<u>Chart 3.1  Size of Public Sector in Ratios Relative to Various Other Countries.</u>_**

||**Comoros**|**Burundi**|**Rwanda**|**Gambia**|**Central**<br>**African**<br>**Republic**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||_2011_|_2011_|_2010/2011_|_2011_|_2011_|
|Wages toGDP|8.9%|8.7%|3.5%|5.9%|4.3%|
|Wages to Domestic Revenues|64.0%|60.8%|25.2%|39.6%|39.8%|
|Wages to Total Expenditures|37.1%|24.4%|12.4%|24.6%|27.0%|
|Wages to PrimaryDomestic Expenditures|47.8%|39.2%|16.7%|43.1%|39.8%|
||**Comoros**|**Sao**<br>**Tome**|**Mauritius**|**Seychelles**|<br>**Cape**<br>**Verde**|
||_2011_|_2010_|_2011_|_2010_|_2010_|
|Wages to GDP|8.9%|8.8%|5.9%|6.0%|11.7%|
|Wages to Domestic Revenues|64.0%|45.8%|28.6%|19.7%|<br>53.9%|
|Wages to Total Expenditures|37.1%|18.4%|26.6%|18.3%|30.3%|
|Wages to PrimaryDomestic Expenditures|47.8%|38.4%|31.4%|19.9%|44.3%|

Source: IMF Country Reports, various years.

With few exceptions, the wage bill in Comoros exceeds, sometimes even vastly, that of the comparison countries. The ratio of wages to different indicators confirms that the wage bill is substantial. The ratio of wages to primary domestic expenditures, where Comoros exceeds the

> 4 2001 figure is from Le Gay (2001) and the 2012 figure is an estimate of data provided by the Government of Comoros.

> 5 This figure includes core civil service as well as teachers and nurses in both national and island governments, but excludes the military and police officers, as well as employees of State Owned Enterprises; the employment levels in local government is negligible.

4