By Lubin Doe
The OECD has established a comprehensive database on budget institutions in 97 countries worldwide. This base also contains the results of the 2008 World Bank/ Collaborative Africa Budget Reform Initiative (CABRI)/OECD survey of 26 African and 13 Asian countries.
The survey seeks to gather general information on budget institutions and responses to specific issues on budget preparation, adoption, execution, accounting, and audit. Questions were also fielded on performance budgeting and aid management.
According to the highlights of the results of the 2007 OECD survey and the 2008 World Bank CABRI/OECD project:
• Top down budgeting is more common in Asia and Africa than in OECD;
• African more than Asian and OECD countries impose ceilings on spending requests of line ministries;
• African countries more than the other groups of countries have multi-year expenditure ceilings; and
• African countries also report more performance targeting than the other groups.
My personal comments
Experience shows that PFM is weak in most African countries, and it seems doubtful that they would have an edge over other countries on MTEF and performance budgeting issues. It would be desirable to undertake a detailed analysis of the survey results, and eventually make the questions more specific to the conditions of developing countries.
The note (Download CABRIHighlights.pdf) and database of the 2008 World Bank CABRI/OECD survey are attached.
