Промышленный лизинг Промышленный лизинг  Методички 

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Box 1

The role of assessments in promoting dialogue between donors and recipient governments, and reform

For development agencies, recipient governments, and other stakeholders, the process of interaction-the dialogue set in motion by assessments-is just as important as the specific report itself, whether a PER, CFAA, or Fiscal ROSC. The reason is simple: the goal of any assessment is to facilitate the development of sustainable reforms that will both strengthen a countrys public expenditure system and achieve key policy objectives such as poverty reduction.

Diagnostic reports provide valuable data, analyses, and recommendations, and form the basis for formal discussions with recipient governments. But if an assessment is conducted well, most such discussions will already have occurred, and change will have been initiated through the assessment process. Moreover, dialogue between an assessment team and a recipient government provides an opportunity for ministries and agencies to communicate with each other, uncover sources of common difficulties, and begin working together toward solutions that take account of the institutional and governance reasons for weak public expenditure management. Indeed, some analysts argue that triggering this internal dialogue is the most important output of an external assessment. Integration, then, should be understood more as integrating assessment processes than as delivering standardized reports on different aspects of public expenditure management or merely eliminating ex post inconsistencies between these reports.

Interestingly, all the instruments reviewed in this study focus on the legal frameworks and organizational structures and processes for public expenditure management-describing the laws, regulations, and operational procedures for budget formulation and budget execution. Though such information is useful and relevant, it is not clearly linked to aggregate fiscal discipline, efficient resource allocation, and efficient and effective delivery of public services-the three basic public expenditure policy objectives defined by Campos and Pradhan (1996) that have become widely accepted in the international development community. Some questionnaires and toolkits follow the Campos-Pradhan approach (such as DFID 2001b), but



the main diagnostic instruments reviewed in this study have not been modified to reflect it. Such changes would require significant redesign.

WORLD BANK PUBLIC EXPENDITURE REVIEWS

The PER-the oldest instrument reviewed in this study-is the World Banks traditional tool for analyzing public expenditure.3 As noted, when the artificial distinction between development and nondevelopment expenditure was abandoned and adjustment lending was introduced, investment reviews expanded to assess the overall government spending that budget support helped finance.

Until the 1990s traditional PERs consisted mainly of an assessment of fiscal trends, an analysis of resource allocations between and within sectors, various annexes dealing with expenditure policies and programs in the major sectors, and sometimes a review of the fiscal relationship between government and public enterprises. The efficiency and operational effectiveness of public expenditure (let alone corruption issues) were rarely if ever addressed.4 Thus, it is not surprising that ostensibly sensible recommendations in early PERs-say, to increase spending in priority social sectors, or to accelerate investment disbursements-were operationally hollow.

But in recent years, aided by the spotlight placed on corruption and public mismanagement by the East Asian crisis, PERs have increasingly added budget systems, implementation, and capacity building to their traditional areas of review.5 The main emphasis is on the upstream phases of expenditure management: medium-term expenditure programming, annual budget preparation, and legislative approval.

Recent years have also seen the emergence in a few countires of government-led PERs, which are a continuous process rather than a one-off review, often built around the annual budget cycle. The government of Tanzania, for example, owns and leads the countrys diagnostic program for public expenditure management, the centerpiece of which is the PER. This program is closely integrated with the budget cycle and involves a broad range of stakeholders and close participation by donors. As a result the PER process has evolved from providing an external evaluation of budget management to supporting the development of a multiyear expenditure framework. Tanzanias new approach has also improved donor coordination by ensuring that aid is consistent with budget objectives and priorities and increasingly integrated with the budget.



Tanzanias program for evaluating and reforming public expenditure management is designed to share donors thematic and sector-specific experience with participating stakeholders, improve resource use by undertaking technical studies of budget issues, raise the profile of budget issues, and support donors in shifting the focus of aid from project to budget support. Several other countries that depend on aid and have limited capacity-such as Ethiopia and Uganda-have also been developing similar participatory, collaborative approaches to work on public expenditure management.

WORLD BANK COUNTRY FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY ASSESSMENTS

The CFAA is the Banks main diagnostic tool for public financial management and accountability. It is designed to provide information about the financial management environment in which Bank (and other donor) funds may be disbursed. Thus it helps ensure that donor funds are used properly. The CFAA is not an audit that tracks individual spending, nor does it provide a pass/fail assessment of a countrys financial management system or define minimum standards for system capabilities and performance. CFAAs do, however, provide recommendations and action plans.

Public financial accountability can be interpreted as covering the entire process of resource mobilization, allocation, use, and controls, as well as the interactions between the executive and legislative branches and civil society on fiscal and budget issues. Recognizing the need to set reasonable boundaries, CFAAs focus on describing and analyzing downstream financial management and expenditure controls, including expenditure monitoring, accounting and financial reporting, internal controls, internal and external auditing, and ex post legislative review. As noted, the upstream phases of public expenditure management are generally the domain of PERs, as are issues of expenditure efficiency and effectiveness.

Nevertheless, measures of fiduciary risk include the deviations between actual and budgeted expenditures that arise in many countries and the incomplete budget scrutiny that results from the use of extrabudgetary funds and other off-budget expenditures. Thus a good CFAA cannot entirely neglect the budget preparation process-no more than a good PER can neglect major problems in budget execution, accounting, auditing, and financial controls. In practice, this potential overlap tends to be



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