Theme 3: Governance of Public Finance
Governance of public finance is a core reform area that has a critical influence
on promoting development in Arab countries. In this framework the budget, as one
of the key economic instruments in allocating a significant share of a nation's
gross domestic product, establishes policy priorities through the allocation of
funding. The basic operations of government ministries and agencies are established
in the context of the budget. Overall, the budget provides the architecture for
decision-making and accountability in government. It is a key tool to promote market
based economic growth and long term fiscal sustainability.
Challenges:
1. Improving transparency:
- How to deal with insufficient budget transparency and inclusiveness with regard
to budget planning and execution, fragmentation of spending, including tax expenditures
and foreign aid?
- How to deal with inaccurate asset inventories?
- How to manage public resources with incomplete and inaccurate for-casting and decision
making systems?
- How to increase transparency with outsourcing schemes?
- How to improve the weak parliamentary control of the budget process?
2. Improving accountability:
- How to combat corruption with regard to budget resources?
- How to increase the system's capacity for self-supervision in order to create internal
credibility of control and audit mechanisms?
3. Improving Performance and development relevance:
- How to link budgets to development plans and economic programming?
- How to introduce the notion of performance in budgeting processes?
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