Target audience

The seminar has been designed for senior level officials from fiscal agencies who actively deal with fiscal policy design, implementation and oversight. Participants from ministries of finance, ministries of economy, central executive offices, prime ministers’ offices, independent fiscal agencies, as well as permanent secretaries, or parliamentary budget and finance committees would be welcome to apply.

Course description

The high-level seminar will examine the role of strong fiscal institutions in improving the quality of fiscal management and helping to ensure fiscal sustainability. Through presentations, case studies on advanced and emerging market experiences, and workshops, the seminar will aim to improve officials’ awareness of the importance of strong fiscal institutions for sound macro-fiscal making and management.

The seminar will discuss the building blocks and options for putting in place a comprehensive institutional framework. It will draw on international experiences and recent developments, including new requirements under the EU fiscal governance framework. In particular, the seminar will review good practices for a sound budget process (e.g. fiscal forecasting, budget execution and treasury management, and reporting). These elements, combined with sound management and reporting on fiscal risks, are key for implementing a medium-term orientation of fiscal policy as part of a medium-term budget framework (MTBF). The seminar will discuss in detail the elements and process to operate fiscal policy within a MTBF and the linkages to fiscal rules. The seminar will review different types of fiscal rules and their properties and discuss options for specific design features (e.g. choice of the target variable, escape clauses, automatic correction mechanism, coordination with sub-national governments). It will also discuss challenges connected to adopting structural budget balance rules, as agreed, for example, under the EU’s Fiscal Compact. And finally, the seminar will explore the possible role of fiscal councils in strengthening fiscal performance by raising public awareness and accountability.

Topics covered

The following topics will be discussed during the course:
Fiscal institutions: An overview of international experience and key requirements
Fiscal reporting: Elements of timely, credible and comprehensive fiscal reporting
Macroeconomic and fiscal forecasting: Importance and challenges
Fiscal risks: What risks to monitor and report
Fiscal rules: Types and options for designing fiscal rules
Medium-term budget frameworks: The practicalities of adopting a medium-term orientation to the budget process
Fiscal councils: Their role, remit and design options, and the challenges in a resource-constraint environment
Budget execution and treasury management: Its role in implementing fiscal policy and ensuring the maintenance of fiscal discipline

Benefits to the individual

The objective of the course is to help officials to better understand the role that strong fiscal institutions can play in ensuring long-term fiscal sustainability and to provide reform options.

Contributions from participants

The seminar will be highly participatory. Participants are encouraged to be active in discussions and exercises throughout the four days.

Lecturers will include staff from the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with broad-based cross country experience of building fiscal institutions, in particular for countries in the region.

Faculty

Mr. Brian Olden, Deputy Division Chief, Public Financial Management Division, Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF
Mr. Olden was the IMF’s Regional Public Financial Management Advisor for South East Europe inform January 2009 to April 2012, before returning back to Washington where he is currently the Deputy Division Chief of the Public Financial Management Division of the Fiscal Affairs Department in the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Before that he worked as the Senior Economist in this Division where he specialized in delivering technical assistance in public financial management to a wide range of countries. As an IMF staff member, Mr. Olden has led or participated in many technical assistance missions to, among others, Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Indonesia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Malawi, the Philippines, Romania, Serbia and Turkey. Prior to joining the IMF, Mr. Olden was Director of Consultancy Services for FTI, a specialist treasury company in Ireland, and held a variety of senior posts at the Irish National Treasury Management Agency and Department of Finance.

Ms. Andrea Schaechter, Deputy Division Chief, Fiscal Policy and Surveillance Division, Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF
Ms. Schaechter is a Deputy Division Chief of the Fiscal Policy and Surveillance Division in the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department and has been with the Fund for 15 years. She has intensively worked on fiscal rules, a topic on which she has published several studies and provided technical assistance. She contributes to the Fiscal Monitor, a semi-annual IMF report that monitors and analyzes public finance developments worldwide. Ms. Schaechter spent two years at the European Commission’s Public Finance Unit in the Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, contributing to developments of the EU’s fiscal governance framework. Ms. Schaechter holds a Ph.D. from Wuerzburg University, Germany. She has published on public finances, monetary policy—including co-authoring a textbook—and banking sector risks.

Mr. Dirk-Jan Kraan, Public Financial Management Advisor for South East Europe of the IMF
Mr. Kraan is a Dutch citizen. He holds MA degrees in Law (1970) and Economics (1976) from Erasmus University in Rotterdam and a PhD degree in Economics from the same university (1989). He worked in several positions in the Directorate General of the Budget of the Dutch Ministry of Finance from 1980 to 2002, lately as head of the Division of Policy Review of the Inspectorate of Finance (Expenditure Division). He joined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2002 as a senior economist in the Budgeting and Public Expenditures Division of the Directorate of Public Governance and Territorial Development. At the OECD he was among other things responsible for the Eastern European program of the Budgeting and Expenditure Division and for the OECD Value for Money Study on the organization of central government. He recently joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to work as a Regional Public Financial Management Advisor for South East Europe based at the CEF in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Building Fiscal Institutions to Meet Post-Crisis Challenges