In early April the IMF released the findings of its March staff mission to Comoros to assess the country's performance under its extended credit facility (ECF; 2009-12) programme. While noting that real GDP growth had improved-to 2.1% in 2010 from 1.8% the previous year-and that the current-account deficit had not widened further (remaining at 8.6% of GDP), the Fund warned that the protracted election and transition period had "weakened the focus on reforms". This is having a particularly serious impact on attempts at wage restraint. The Fund warned that without an "urgent" change in policy, the wage bill could reach 11% of GDP this year and absorb more than half of total revenue. This is unsustainable; indeed, the government has already run into difficulties paying wages-salary payments have been suspended since November 2010 and several months of wage arrears have accumulated.

Ballooning wage bills are a chronic problem in Comoros. This reflects persistent union pressure for higher wages (pressure that politicians find difficult to resist in the run-up to elections); the high cost of running parallel island and Union administrations; and overstaffing (which is politically difficult to address as unemployment is high and formal employment outside the public sector is limited). However, there are some grounds for expecting a decline in the wage bill.

• Comoros has computerised the civil servant payment roster and adequately staffed the unit that monitors wage payments.
• The National Assembly has recently adopted new personnel frameworks for the civil service that will help to reduce civil service staffing from 2011.
• Wage arrears have fallen after a US$26m grant provided by Qatar in May 2010 was used, in part, to pay several months of civil service wage arrears.

Despite this, the projected decline in the civil service wage bill to 7.9% of GDP by 2012 (from 9% of GDP in 2009) looks overly ambitious.