Richard Allen is a former staff member and Deputy Division Chief of the Fiscal Affairs Department of the IMF. Since April 2021 he has been a global consultant on public finance issues. He has contributed to the Blog since its launch in 2007 and has been a Co-Editor for ten years. He is also a Senior Research Associate with the Overseas Development Institute in London. Before joining the IMF Richard was a senior official at the UK Treasury, the OECD, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, and a board member of the European Investment Bank. He has advised the governments of over 80 countries in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean on public finance topics. He is the co-editor of The International Handbook of Public Financial Management, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2015, and the author of many other books and articles on PFM and fiscal issues.
Holger van Eden is presently the IMF’s Resident PFM Advisor in Cambodia. Previously, he was the IMF’s Regional PFM Advisor for Southeast Asia, based in Bangkok, and Deputy Division Chief in the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department. He has led, coordinated and provided IMF technical assistance and training to countries around the world, but with a focus on Asia, Latin-America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe. His main focus areas include budget preparation, public investment management, fiscal risk management, budget and fiscal responsibility law, treasury management, and financial management information systems. Within the Fiscal Affairs Department he has had a leadership role in developing IMF research and board papers on reform of budget institutions, public investment management, fiscal transparency, and climate change. Before joining the IMF, Holger worked as team leader and project coordinator in international consultancy, as an economic journalist and editor, and as a financial consultant for a global accounting firm. He started his career in the Treasury of the Dutch Ministry of Finance.
Sandeep Saxena is a Deputy Division Chief in the Fiscal Affairs Department (FAD) of the International Monetary Fund. He possesses over thirty years of experience in public financial management (PFM)—both as a practitioner and as an advisor—designing and implementing PFM reforms and supporting institution building in developing and fragile economies. Over the years, he has assisted several Asian, Caribbean, and Latin American countries in developing and implementing wide-ranging PFM reforms and published technical guidance on a variety of PFM topics. Prior to joining the IMF in 2011, Sandeep was a senior civil servant in India. Sandeep holds a master’s degree in science and a post graduate degree in public policy & management from Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, India.
Lama Harake (fadm2ast@imf.org) is the PFM Blog’s administrator and provides technical support to the editors and authors of PFM Blog articles.