mists and specialists in financial management, procurement, and governance that conduct assessments.

The mapping also revealed important gaps in the instruments-both in their formal guidelines and in how those guidelines are interpreted when assessment reports are produced:

None of the instruments provides broad, substantial coverage of the forecasting, collection, and administration of taxes and other government revenue, though many PERs address some of these issues and the recently updated CFAA guidelines include accounting and control aspects of tax administration. This oversight is surprising given that accurate revenue forecasts and efficient tax collection are crucial for sound public expenditure management.

Although asset management is included in the updated CFAA guidelines, no CFAA has covered this issue-which also requires a wider perspective than financial management alone, including sound understanding of accounting, economic, and procurement issues.

Debt and aid management are covered in PERs and CFAAs but, as with revenue forecasting, not systematically or comprehensively.

Effective management of public records is an important element of public expenditure management but is hardly covered by the assessment instruments. The United Nations Development Programmes CONTACT guidelines include a records management module, and the International Records Management Trust is developing-as a subprogram of PEFA-questionnaires covering management of government records in areas such as financial management and government payroll. Consideration should be given to combining the records management component with the main instruments, particularly CFAAs and CPARs.

The instruments-particularly CFAAs and to a lesser extent PERs and CPARs-tend to focus on central government systems for public expenditure management. This approach is understandable given the expertise of development agency staff and the limited resources for conducting assessments. But while more attention is being paid to fiscal issues involving subnational governments, state enterprises, and agencies not funded directly by national budgets, it is often insufficient given the shift toward fiscal decentralization in many countries and recognizing that these can be areas of high fiscal risk.

These technical gaps in assessment instruments are in addition to the issues identified elsewhere in this study as needing more work-in particular, strengthening the treatment of institutional and governance issues, increasing dialogue with governments and other donors, developing realistic action plans, ensuring adequate follow-up work, and establishing robust systems for measuring the performance and results of public expenditure management systems.

NOTES

1. These sample reports included the following countries: CFAA- Bangladesh, Benin, Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), Brazil, Mozambique, Philippines, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, Vietnam and Zambia; CPAR-BiH, Philippines, Russia, Turkey, Uganda, and Zambia; PER-BiH, Croatia, Ethiopia, Philippines, Uganda, the Philippines, Tanzania (and sector PERs on Agriculture, Health and Education), Turkey, Vietnam and Zambia; Fiscal ROSC-Bulgaria, Mali, Pakistan, and Turkey; EC Audits-Cameroon, Chad, Cote dlvoire, Ghana, Mozambique and Zambia.

2. For a helpful discussion, see Helping Countries Combat Corruption: The Role of the World Bank (Washington, DC: The World Bank, September 1997). See also Anticorruption in Transition: A Contribution to the Policy Debate, (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2000). See http: lnweb18.worldbank.org/eca/eca.nsf/General/D74DB51B2D46615 D8525695B00678C93?OpenDocument.

3. HIPC AAPs are conducted by Bank and IMF staff with considerable experience in addressing public expenditure management issues in the countries studied. Thus there is no need for long missions by staff new to the countries.

4. The Quality Assurance Group report on fiduciary economic and sector work found that 75 percent of CPARs were satisfactory with respect to internal quality and likely impact, compared with only 50 percent for CFAAs (World Bank 2002e). (PERs and other Bank public expenditure work were not assessed.)

5. In countries for which the Bank is preparing an adjustment loan, a review of public expenditure management is integral to loan preparation and supervision. In such cases formal PERs are unnecessary and not visible in work programs. Thus if adjustment support is being prepared or provided to a country, it is a serious mistake to assume that no attention is being

paid to public expenditure management simply because no PER has been conducted in recent years.

6. The Quality Assurance Group report also recommended a range of other changes in CFAA and CPAR guidelines, including strengthening business processes, revisiting skill mixes for financial management and procurement staff, strengthening partnerships, and enhancing knowledge management (World Bank 2002e).