Welcome to the New IMF Public Financial Management Blog

Welcome to the Public Financial Management Blog of the IMF Fiscal Affairs Department (FAD).

As the first IMF external blog and, to the best of our knowledge, the first PFM blog ever, my FAD colleagues and myself are thrilled to be breaking new ground.

Anti-corruption: you know Bono and U2….What about U4?

Well, U4 is not a rock  band, but it nevertheless rocks.

It is actually an "Anti-Corruption Resource Centre [that] assists  donor practitioners to more effectively address corruption challenges through  their development support."

Public Financial Management and Anti-corruption: prevention through stronger PFM systems

Corruption is a hot  topic in international circles these days, and particularly with respect to country public finance systems. The IMF Fiscal Affairs Department has made a contribution to understanding how improvements in  public financial management systems can help fight corruption.

While  not an 'idiots guide to corruption',  a recent FAD staff paper (Dorotinsky,  William and Shilpa Pradhan), published in "The  Many Faces of Corruption: Tracking Vulnerabilities in the Sectors" (World Bank, 2007), explores the conditions of PFM systems that enable corruption to flourish, the ways corruption commonly manifests itself, and  develops a model for assessing the vulnerability of country PFM systems to  corruption.

New Pacific Assistance Center Publication on Medium-Term Public Finance Frameworks

The IMF-managed Pacific Finance Technical Assistance Center  (PFTAC) recently released a publication on Medium-Term Public Finance Frameworks  (MTF). This is the first in a new series of Handbooks with the purpose to help  building capacity in the public sector for Pacific Island States.

Dr. Allen Schick on Budget Tools and Rules

Professor Allen Schick led an FAD-seminar on "Analytic  Tools Versus Decision Rules for Fiscal Policy" on September 19, 2007.  Many analytic concepts can  be formulated into rules that guide or constrain decisions on the budget  or fiscal policy. Alternatively, analytic tools can be used  to inform decisions, but not to dictate how governments allocate resources.