May 17, 2017

Our Partnership with OECD Promotes Good Budgeting Practices

OECD is among the most important CEF multilateral partners. Our cooperation promotes good budgeting practices. In the past year, we cooperated in organisation of the annual meeting of Senior Budget Officials from Central, Eastern & South-eastern European Countries (the “CESEE-SBO”) that was held in Ljubljana. More than 70 senior officials from 24 countries in the region exchanged their experiences on current budgetary challenges. Ronnie Downes, Deputy Head of Budgeting & Public Expenditures Division in OECD Public Governance & Territorial Development Directorate about our cooperation:

«The OECD convenes the annual meeting of Senior Budget Officials from Central, Eastern & South-eastern European Countries (the “CESEE-SBO”) as a regional network to promote modern budgeting practices, and to connect the region with the broader OECD budgeting community. Since the inception of this network, the CEF has been an excellent and active partner, sharing key insights from its work with countries in the region and contributing to the OECD’s work in developing international standards and guidance.​

An excellent example is the 2016 CESEE-SBO meeting which was hosted by the CEF in Ljubljana, jointly with the Slovenian Ministry of Finance. The event included a joint meeting with the Fiscal Transparency Working Group of the Open Government Partnership, including the IMF, World Bank, PEFA Secretariat and Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT), including innovative structured dialogues with independent voices from civil society and academia on the subject of budget transparency and participative approaches to budgeting. This event provided valuable feedback on the OECD-led initiative to develop a “Practical Toolkit on Budget Transparency”, a process which has recently been concluded successfully under the auspices of the G20.»