Posted by Mira Dobovisek, Center of Excellence in Finance (CEF), Slovenia
According to this year’s CEF Supervisory Board conclusions, over the last three years, the South East European (SEE) countries have largely benefited from the presence of the IMF/CEF technical assistance program and more specifically the public financial management advisor, Mr. Eivind Tandberg, based at the Center of Excellence in Finance (CEF) in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The program primarily consisted of providing technical advice to SEE countries, assisting them in defining PFM reform priorities, and carrying out regional and cross-country analytical and research activities. Furthermore, the advisor provided numerous inputs to courses and other CEF’s events, and helped the CEF in formulating training programs, based on findings from his missions. Satisfied with the results in the area of PFM, the CEF Supervisory Board confirmed the appointment of the IMF government finance statistics advisor, Mr. Vincent Marie, who was posted at the CEF in October 2007. Mr. Brian Olden is expected to take over Mr. Tandberg’s previous duties from January 2009.
Mr. Tandberg concluded his 3-year assignment at the CEF in August 2008. Following the introductory visits to SEE countries, completed in January 2006, Mr. Tandberg carried out 28 technical assistance missions. He was actively engaged in all countries in the region (Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, and Romania) except for Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has been most active in countries where the PFM reform process is a high priority, in particular Moldova, Kosovo, and Montenegro. The advisor also participated in two FAD missions on public-private partnerships (PPPs) to Montenegro and Croatia, and in an FAD decentralization mission to Kosovo. A more detailed description may be found at http://www.cef-see.org/index.php?location=1142.
The operational objectives and the related benchmarks for his work program, developed over the first four months of the assignment, are divided in two groups: basic PFM reforms (complete budget classification, complete budget coverage, capital budget integration, consolidated TSA, adequate budget controls) and advanced reforms (medium-term budgeting, performance oriented budgeting, integrated cash and debt management, unified accounting framework and fiscal transparency). In general, the regional advisor’s work gave priority to addressing the basic reform objectives before allocating any significant resources to more advanced reforms.
SEE countries have made most progress in preparing complete budget classifications and ensuring comprehensive TSA coverage. Budget coverage and fiscal transparency also get fairly high assessments. Some basic reforms have proved to be more demanding than what was assumed in 2005. Several countries are still quite far from achieving the benchmarks for capital budgeting and adequate budget controls, despite considerable work in these areas. Most countries need substantial or very substantial improvements to meet the benchmarks in many advanced reform areas. The area that is least developed is performance-oriented budgeting, followed by medium-term budgeting and unified accounting frameworks.
Mr. Tandberg actively collaborated with the CEF in delivering several courses on program and performance budgeting, medium-term budgeting, budget classification and capital budgeting. He also contributed as a lecturer and coordinator to many other courses, conferences, meetings and other events organized by the CEF, including meetings of the Public Expenditure Management-Peer Assisted Learning (PEM PAL) Network. In addition, the advisor participated in the second, third and fourth annual meetings of Senior Budget Officials of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern European countries, and gave lectures and presentations at the Joint Vienna Institute, at the Summit Economic Forums, organized by the Central European Initiative, at the FAD conference on public investment and public-private partnerships in Budapest and at the FAD conference on performance budgeting in Paris. In 2007, he gave lectures on public-private partnerships in Prague and in Maastricht.
Based on his findings, the advisor compiled an assessment of the status of PFM capacities in the different SEE countries. His paper on budgeting of public investments was included in the book from the FAD conference in Budapest in March 2007. A first draft of a paper on monitoring and evaluation of technical assistance was distributed for comments in late 2007, and will be further developed. A working paper on advanced budget reforms in SEE Countries was presented at the CEF annual meetings in July 2008 and sent out for comments to SEE countries. The papers are planned to be completed by the end of 2008.
Note: Members of the CEF Supervisory Board are ministers of finance and central bank governors or their nominated representatives from the CEF member countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia).
