rest of the comparison countries, indicates that the wage bill is crowding out other forms of spending, especially investment.

Furthermore, the wage bill in Comoros has been increasing substantially in recent years; from 2000 to 2011, the wage bill increased by 201%, while domestic revenues increased 174%.

**_<u>Chart 3.2  Increases in forms of spending and revenue for the Government of Comoros</u>_**

||**2000**|**2011**|**% Change**|
|---|---|---|---|
||_millions of current como_|_rian francs_||
|Total Revenue and Grants|15,556|45,349|191.52%|
|DomesticRevenues|11,017|30,175|173.89%|
|Total Expenditure and NetLending|17,614|49,269|179.71%|
|**Wages and Salaries**|**6,093**|**18,350**|**201.17%**|

Source: IMF Country Reports, various years.

Such a sizeable wage bill at least partially contributes to the chronic delays in the payment of civil servants, a problem that has plagued Comoros for over a decade, but seems to have abated as of 2012 until the date of publishing this paper. Previously, the government would simply fail to pay its employees; for instance, in 1995, the government did not pay its employees approximately half of their salaries (Le Gay, 2001). Since then, delays in salary payments have become a routine phenomenon. Government employees during much of the last decade expected that they would not receive salary payments for months at a time. Civil servants seek sources of credit during the period of nonpayment, while others find alternative sources of income, contributing to chronic absenteeism.

Even more importantly, salary arrears, as well as the stagnant wages of the civil service, have led to increasing levels of conflict between the government and public sector trade unions, especially the teachers union. Teachers held a strike that shut public schools for approximately six months until December 2011, during which no children attended public schools. The government only resolved the issue after threatening to fire teachers if they did not return to work, and subsequently suspended a number of teachers who refused to do so.

The growth of the public sector, and the related increases in the wage bill, crowd out other forms of spending, such as public investment, which is quite low in Comoros and driven almost exclusively by donors. In 2007, the percentage of total expenditures used for domestically financed public capital expenditure was just 3.8%, as opposed to 16.8% for foreign financed public capital expenditure.<sup>6</sup> In other words, the Government of Comoros finances little of its own capital investment, the vast majority coming from donors. Such a situation extends to even the most basic equipment necessary to perform government functions. For instance, one recent study estimated that there were fewer than 2,000 chairs and just over 1,000 tables for over 4,000 public sector employees who would need them (Government of Comoros, 2009). During visits to the Education Commissions in the Island Governments – a commission being the island government equivalent of a ministry, officials claimed they depended on UNICEF to provide such basic materials as computers, paper, and even pens.

**_Chart 3.3   Ratio of Average Civil Servant Remuneration to nominal GDP per capita among African countries in recent years_**

|**Comoros**|**Gambia**|**Senegal**|**Cote d'Ivoire**|
|---|---|---|---|
|4.8|4.2|8.9|11.6|

Source: Republic of Ghana, 2011; Author calculations.

> 6 Analysis based on data from IMF Country Report, 2009.

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