Public Finance

Strengthening Pacific Public Finance Management and Governance

Public Finance management (PFM) is often represented through the budget cycle with planning, implementation and reporting phases. Some of those phases overlap, for instance a government is often at once planning its next budget, implementing the current one and reporting on the previous year. A good practice is for lessons from the previous years to inform the design of future budgets. This is essential to improve government services. It is particularly important in economies which have limited resources: how do we make each public spending count -fairly and effectively?

In the Pacific, there are as many ways to manage public monies as they are administrations, but our research shows one common weakness: oversight.

Oversight are the external checks and controls that exist to monitor how government plans, spends and reports on the nation’s finances. They are essential to ensure that climate change is taken into account when developing fiscal strategies and annual budgets, that the most marginalized communities are not forgotten when the money is spent and that lessons are learnt when things haven’t gone according to plan.

 

 

What We Do:

The PFM project is funded by the European Union and implemented by UNDP. The project works with Parliaments, SAIs and civil society organisations on Public Finance Oversight by:

 

 

Who We Work With:

Several regional implementing partners are working on the PFM Project funded by the European Union:

  1. The Pacific Technical Assistance Centre (PFTAC) supports Pacific governments in shaping their public finance management systems and develop key PFM strategies and documents.
  2. The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) provides coordination and evaluation services for the PFM project.
  3. The University of the South Pacific (USP) as the premier provider of tertiary education in the Pacific region focuses on developing PFM human resources in the Pacific.

UNDP is additionally working with two strategic partners when looking into public finance oversight:

  1. The Pacific Association of Supreme Audit Institutions (PASAI) is implementing the activities related to Supreme Audit Institutions.
  2. The Pacific Islands Association of Non-Government Organisations (PIANGO) is our key partner in working with civil society.

The project benefits from strong collaboration with two complementary UNDP projects:

  1. Parliamentary Development portfolio
  2. Governance for Resilient Development

 

Public Finance: 'Almost Experts' Mentorship Program

Application Deadline: 16 August 2021 - Click here for more information

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