Credit tumsasedgars/iStock
Credit tumsasedgars/iStock
Credit tumsasedgars/iStock
Credit tumsasedgars/iStock
Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) assessment reports offer a comprehensive 360-degree view of Public Financial Management (PFM), utilizing robust evidence-based scoring methodology. While producing a high-quality PEFA assessment report is largely a technical exercise, decisions on reform actions necessarily need to go beyond what are seen as technically good PFM practices.
PEFA Secretariat has emphasized the importance of significant post-assessment reflections before making reform decisions and has issued a globally utilized handbook entitled “Using PEFA to Support Public Financial Management Improvements.[1]
Considering first-hand practical experiences and the referred guidance, the authors aim to introduce and explore seven key principles (or mantras) complementary to the existing guidance for successful PFM reforms:
PFM reforms in the past two decades have yielded significant benefits to governments and citizens. Nevertheless, there are still valid concerns that PFM reforms focus more on ‘form’ than ‘function’. The criticism of PFM reforms for producing “administrative systems in developing countries that look like those of modern states but that do not (indeed, cannot) perform like them” by Andrews, Pritchett, and Woolcock in 2017[2] seems valid even today. The solution does not lie only in more resources for PFM reforms but also in ensuring the art of PFM reform is mainstreamed in government functioning.
