Budget reform as a means of improving public service delivery comes under the spotlight on Wednesday as officials from 18 African countries meet in Pretoria to discuss improving public finance management.
Jointly hosted by South Africa, Uganda and Mozambique, the three-day Collaborative Africa Budget Reform Seminar is to canvass such issues as budget credibility and improving expenditure quality.
”This is the first time that African countries have come together and organised a workshop on budget reform on our own,” South African Treasury official Kuben Naidoo told a press conference.
”This is not driven by donors… it’s about governments coming together on their own.”
Naidoo said improving financial governance in Africa was critical to improving the continent’s development prospects.
”African countries face the task to try and improve services amid tight resource constraints,” he said. ”Budget reform is critical in advancing our tasks.”
Neil Cole, director in the Treasury budget office, said the seminar sought to bring African officials together to talk frankly about reforms, and to share experiences.
The delegates planned to set up a network of senior budget officials at the conclusion of the talks to continue the exchange of ideas.
”This is an attempt to share ideas on achieving credible budgets — to learn from each other in order not to make the same mistakes,” Mozambican finance ministry director Jose Sulemane told reporters.
South African Treasury chief director for expenditure Taz Chaponda, said many developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, might not meet the so-called Millennium Development Goals — which relate to reducing poverty and improving access to public services in poor countries.
Finding the resources was only one part of the puzzle, he said. The other was to ensure the money was well managed and spent.
”The budget reform agenda is about improving the quality of public spending,” Chaponda said.
The seminar, due to end on Friday, was also attended by independent budget experts.
Countries represented, apart from the hosts, were Angola, Botswana, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Topics on the agenda included building realistic budgets, boosting budget credibility, transparency and accountability, fiscal discipline and medium-term planning, donor support, and methods of expenditure tracking.
In his opening speech, Naidoo told delegates that good financial governance was essential to improving government delivery.
”Budget reform should not be a donor-driven project, something we write a paper about, publish in some northern country to be filed and forgotten,” he said.
”It must be our weapon, driven by budget officials, to improve the lot of our people.” – Sapa