The IMF says the global financial crisis is having major implications for the public finances of most countries. Fiscal revenues are declining through the operation of automatic stabilisers (e.g unemployment benefit payments) and because of lower asset and commodity prices. The Fund says in a staff paper, published last Tuesday, that debt-to-GDP ratio of advanced countries is expected to rise by 20 percentage points in 2009 - - the most pronounced upturn in the last few decades. The one-year increase in government debt is three times as large as that experienced during the 1993 recession. More than a quarter of this increase is due to financial sector support packages. The debt ratio for the average of the emerging economies also shows a sizable increase in 2009, the first since 2002.