CEF Issued Second Edition of the Book on Linking Structural Reforms to the Budget

The CEF has published the second edition of the Fiscal Impact Assessment of Structural Reforms: Case Studies on South East Europe. Covering nine countries, the book presents in-depth needs assessment on a key issue that has not been sufficiently addressed: how the costs of these reforms are integrated within countries’ budget processes and fiscal programming documents.

Working closely with Montenegro’s Ministry of Finance, and with support from the World Bank’s SAFE Trust Fund, we identified authors with the right knowledge to assess the situation and offer recommendations for improvement.
 
Studies were prepared for seven countries of the western Balkans, as well as Slovenia and Turkey, in the second half of 2012. Each author outlines the country’s annual budget preparation and medium-term fiscal programming, and how costs of structural reforms are incorporated. Studies identify issues to be addressed, with a focus on the role and capacity needs of ministries of finance, line ministries, and other budget users. Each study has been revised to incorporate comments that authors received from their regional counterparts and international experts at a seminar that we convened at the Regional School of Public Administration in Danilovgrad, Montenegro, in October 2012.
 
The case studies and the seminar have been delivered under the Fiscal Impact Assessment of Structural Reforms (FIASR) project, which is part of a long-term CEF program, Building Capacities for Policy Design and Implementation. The capacity development needs identified by the case studies have been addressed through a series of learning and networking events within the EU-funded project on Strategic Planning and Budgeting that we deliver until September 2015. For example, we recently developed new coursework on the Integration of Structural Reforms into Fiscal Programming, and on Budget Submissions of Line Ministries.
 
Through the FIASR project we further extended our efforts to strengthen capacities of budget officials also at line ministries. It helped integrating their needs in our coursework on budget preparation and execution, and incorporating budget officials of line ministries in joint learning activities with their counterparts from ministries of finance.
 
The delivered activities raised awareness among top-level officials of institutions, who coordinate and contribute to medium-term macrofiscal frameworks, of the need and opportunities to improve those frameworks. The CEF has already started preparing a follow-up project that will further address the capacity development needs of ministries of finance and line ministries.

The book is available here.