Fiscal policy frameworks in other monetary unions Before addressing the relevance of fiscal rules for Latin America and the Caribbean, let me first say something about the use of fiscal rules in other monetary unions of interest, notably the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) and - closer to the Netherlands Antilles - the Eastern Caribbean Monetary Union (ECCU).
The programmes agreed upon by the two African monetary unions - the name of one of which has even been based on arrangements in the EU, namely the WAEMU’s Convergence, Stability, Growth, and Solidarity Pact - require annual fiscal balances to be in surplus or in balance, a limitation of the domestic and foreign debt ratio to 70% of GDP and a reduction of the inflation rate to 3%.