Improving Financial Management Capacity in Government

Posted by Ivor Beazley[1]

Governments run large complex operations disbursing more money than most large business enterprises, so it is perhaps surprising that financial management professionals have not had a more prominent role in managing public services. For many years finance professionals were confined to niche areas of government such as tax administration, debt management and audit but this has been changing.

Why Maintaining Public Infrastructure is So Important

Posted by Willie du Preez[1]

Public Infrastructure assets are a foundation of a country’s economic development. Maintaining such assets in good condition is critical. Infrastructure wears out with time and use. Neglected infrastructure will result in degradation of the assets with negative effects on the economy, leading to greater costs of reconstruction over time. The goal of maintenance is to preserve an asset, not to upgrade it. It includes minor repairs (routine maintenance) and improvements (capital maintenance) to eliminate the cause of defects and to avoid excessive repetition of routine maintenance efforts.

Public-Private Partnerships in the Caribbean Region: Reaping the Benefits While Managing Fiscal Risks

Posted by Maximilien Queyranne and Wendell Daal[1]

In 1998, the Government of Jamaica faced a difficult infrastructure challenge. The island’s roads were in decay, Kingston’s congestion was at its peak, road accidents and fatalities were common. The authorities had an ambitious project to address these challenges—create a network of modern highways—but lacked the means and the expertise to build it.

New Insights on National Oil Companies

Posted by David Mihalyi and Patrick Heller[1]

National oil companies (NOCs) are economic giants controlling at least $3.1 trillion in assets and producing most of the world’s oil and gas. Many of these companies execute complex projects, provide critical energy infrastructure, and make a big contribution to local employment and state revenues. But NOCs also present important risks to public finance, as we highlight in a new report from the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), based on a database covering 71 national oil companies worldwide, from 2011 to 2017.

Rethinking the Design of FMISs

Posted by Richard Allen and Gerardo Uña[1]

Financial management information systems (FMISs) are a vital tool for governments to process, store, and report on financial information and transactions. A well-functioning FMIS provides timely, reliable, and comprehensive reports that support the government’s fiscal policies and fiscal rules, and the formulation, control, monitoring, and execution of the budget. If used well, these systems promote financial integrity and transparency.

Open Contracting: Getting Better Value for Money

Posted by Lindsey Marchessault^[1]

Every year governments spend an estimated US$ 9.5 trillion (15% of global GDP) through contracts on everything from pencils and paper to building major infrastructure projects. And every year, there are numerous cases where these contracts do not deliver good value for money. While the high-profile cases tend to make the news, there are often many more contracts that suffer from cost overruns, delays, poor quality, or corruption. In its recent Fiscal Monitor: Curbing Corruption, the IMF identifies the opportunities in putting an emphasis on procurement. This blog explores how open contracting can provide an innovative solution to the challenge of making procurement more effective, fairer and more transparent.    

How Parliamentary Budgets are Set and Managed in Europe

Posted by Johann Seiwald[1]

How do legislatures in Europe prepare and execute their budgets? This question was analysed in a recent survey of 20 EU Member States prepared by the Austrian Parliamentary Budget Office. The purpose of the study was to understand the rules and procedures that determine the budgetary process in national parliaments, the extent of parliamentary budgetary autonomy, and the links with good budget practices. The main results are summarized in Figure 1 below.

Delivering Social Benefits in India through the FMIS

Posted by Alok Verma[1]

The Prime Minister of India recently launched a direct cash transfer program targeting 120 million small and marginalized farmers with an annual budget allocation of $11 billion. The program is called Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN). Under this scheme, which was announced on February 1^st 2019 and executed only three weeks later, an initial database of 10.1 million beneficiaries was established and a first installment of INR 2000 (about US $28) was transferred to each farmer’s bank account.

Implementing a Treasury Single Account in Niger

Posted by Matthieu Sarda[1]

The implementation of a treasury single account (TSA) is recognized as a core PFM reform. It allows countries to plan and manage their financial commitments by mobilizing resources more easily. Yet, as crucial as a TSA may be, its implementation has proved challenging in the eight West Africa Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) countries[2]. The reasons are political rather than technical. Public entities characteristically fear that by transferring funds to the TSA they will lose of control of the resources they manage.

La mise en œuvre du Compte Unique du Trésor au Niger

Par Matthieu Sarda[1]

La mise en œuvre d’un compte unique au Trésor (CUT) représente « la mère des réformes », permettant à un État de mieux faire face à ses engagements en disposant de ressources publiques plus facilement mobilisables. Or, cette réforme, aussi nécessaire soit elle, se trouve inachevée dans la plupart des huit pays d’Afrique de l’Ouest (UEMOA)[2], pour des raisons essentiellement politiques : en effet, les entités publiques redoutent de perdre le contrôle des ressources qu'elles gèrent en transférant des fonds sur le CUT.