Despite its sober promises to the IMF and the fact that the elections are over, the government's instinct over the next two years will be to take an expansionist approach. Public spending on civil service and military pay awards will increase, and some of the measures called for in the national development strategy will be implemented, which will also entail the use of state funds. A new semi-autonomous revenue agency, the Office Burundais des Recettes (OBR), will have a positive impact on domestic revenue growth during the forecast period, although not to the level optimistically assumed by the government's 2011 budget forecast. With expenditure set to remain high, revenue likely to grow more modestly, and donors only expanding their disbursements slowly, we believe the fiscal balance will remain substantially negative and trend slowly downward over the forecast period, from 6.5% of GDP in 2010 to 6.8% of GDP in 2012.