The delivery of this activity is kindly supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, and the Slovak Republic – UNDP Partnership for Results in the International Development Cooperation.
How you will benefit
The objective of the workshop is to promote participants’ learning about ways to improve the quality of budget submissions. After attending this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Explain budget submission processes at line ministries
- Understand sectoral policy making and its fiscal implications
- Describe the coordination challenges linked to budget submissions
- Identify strong and weak features of the budget process of line ministries
What you will learn
The following topics will be discussed during the workshop:
- Sectoral policy making and its fiscal implications
- Budget submission processes in South East Europe
- Quality of Sectoral Policy Cycle
- Role of the center in policy coordination
- Structural reforms in the light of EU accession
- Budget negotiations
Who should attend
The workshop has been designed primarily for mid-to-senior level public officials working at line ministries (and other budget users) who actively deal with budget formulation, strategic planning and budget decision-making. Mid-to-senior level officials working at ministries of finance coordinating and analyzing the budget submissions of budget users are also kindly invited to attend the workshop.
Your contributions
The workshop will be highly participatory. Participants are encouraged to be active in discussions throughout the three days and to share their country experiences and challenges in preparing their budget submissions. The workshop will include a group exercise to give participants a hands-on opportunity to simulate budget negotiations, and to prepare an advice for the minister on ways to improve the budget submission process.
About this learning learning event
This course focuses on the budget process in line ministries. It aims at supporting finance officials of line ministries to carry out their tasks and at stimulating reflection on the merits of current procedures and how they could be improved. The latter aim is also relevant for officials of the Ministry of Finance who deal with line ministries, and serves the ultimate objective to improve the budget process of central government as a whole.
Finance officials of line ministries are a crucial link in the budget process. They form the interface between the policy cycles of the line ministries and the annual budget cycle. The policy cycles of the line ministries are typically organized around “programs” or policy areas with one or more central objectives. They are usually multi-annual. They include the stages of policy preparation, decision-making, policy execution, evaluation and revision. Policy preparation typically includes long-term and medium term planning. Finance officials of line ministries have to mediate between the Ministry of Finance and the sectoral directorates of the line ministries in order to make sure that sectoral plans are consistent with the financial limits, which are decided in the annual budget cycle.
In a modern budget process financial limits are decided in an early stage of the annual budget cycle and cover the next budget year as well as 2 to 4 “out-years” beyond the next budget year. Finance officials of line ministries have a crucial role in the estimation of the costs of new sectoral policy plans. They have to see to it that these cost estimates are realistic and that they can be accommodated within prevailing financial limits for the ministry as a whole. The course will start with a presentation about the fiscal costs of the various instruments of which the policy plans of sectoral directorates are composed. Attention will be paid to the organization of the internal budget process in line ministries and the procedures that ensure consistency between the sectoral policy plans and the annual budget.
Next, the course will offer presentations about the organization and tasks of the finance directorate of a line ministry in selected South East Europe countries, for example, in Turkey. These case studies will be discussed and used as point of departure for an evaluation of the weak and strong aspects of the organization and tasks of the finance directorates of line ministries in the countries of the participants.
Furthermore, the course will pay attention to sectoral plans that are aimed at so-called “structural reforms”. These plans are particularly important because they have a large impact on the national economy, including the private sector. For this reason the European Union has set up a special monitoring procedure for structural reforms, which require member countries to report these plans to the European Commission.
Finance officials of line ministries not only have to see to it that the fiscal consequences of sectoral policy plans fit within existing financial limits, but they also have a crucial role in the negotiation of these limits. The course will pay attention to the annual negotiation process between the line ministries and the Ministry of Finance about the ministerial ceilings in the form of a simulation game. The aim of this game is to highlight possible strategies of the line ministries to get its sectoral policy plans adopted and possible strategies of the Ministry of Finance to maintain budgetary discipline.
Faculty
DIRK-JAN KRAAN, CEF Advisor
Dirk-Jan 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).
Mr. Kraan 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. In 2012-2014, he was based at the CEF as the IMF's Regional Advisor on Public Financial Management for South East Europe, and has become an Advisor to the CEF thereafter.
MOJMIR MRAK, Professor of International Finance, University of Ljubljana, and CEF Associate Fellow
Mojmir Mrak is a Jean Monnet Chair professor of international finance at the University of Ljubljana and a regular visiting professor at post-graduate programs of the universities of Siena and Vienna. His main research fields include capital flows, trade and project finance, and EU institutional and public finance issues. Professor Mrak is author of numerous books and articles.
Mr. Mrak has more than 20 years of experience in designing and implementing the Slovenian government's policy in areas of international finance and EU accession. In the first five years following independence in 1991, he was the chief external debt negotiator of Slovenia. In addition, he was responsible for the early credit arrangements of Slovenia with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank. Between 1998 and 2002, he was chief advisor of the Slovenian government on financial aspects of the country’s EU accession. Within this framework, he was responsible for negotiations about the financial package of Slovenia’s accession. Between 2003 and early 2006, he coordinated the Slovene government’s activities with respect to the 2007-2013 financial perspective of the EU, and is currently involved in negotiations about the 2014-2020 financial perspective of the EU.
Mr. Mrak has served as a consultant to numerous international organizations and several governments in South East Europe. He is a CEF Associate Fellow.
HASAN HÜSEYİN ERDOĞAN, Head of Strategic Management Department, Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources of Turkey
Hasan Hüseyin Erdoğan has 24 years of experience with coal mining, renewable energy research, strategic planning and budgeting. At the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources (MENR) of Turkey, he is leading the strategic management of the Directorate of Strategy Development. He is currently reviewing the preparation and monitoring of the MENR Strategic Plan, and a key member of the team preparing the Strategic Plan for 2015-2019.
In 2001, Mr. Erdoğan obtained an MSc degree in Mine Engineering, and holds a BSc degree in the same discipline from Middle East Technical University. After graduation, he worked in an underground coal mine as a shift engineer for nine years. He was responsible for the development and production of the mine. Afterwards, he worked first as Engineer and then as Chief of Division of Fossil Resources in the General Directorate of Energy Affairs at MENR. During this period, he completed a course on hydropower plants in China, and was responsible for the financial analysis of hydropower plant projects. For the following years, he was also in charge of the utilization of coal resources in Turkey.
Mr. Erdoğan is a member of the Coal Subcommittee at the Global Methane Initiative (GMI), and the Sustainable Energy Development Working Group at INOGATE. In 2008, he completed the Sustainable Development Program organized by the Regional Environment Center. For his PhD studies, he is continuing his earlier research on risk analysis and risk management of accidents in an underground coal mine.
He is married, and has 3 children.
LENA DE STIGTER, GIZ Advisor
Lena is an advisor at the German Development Cooperation (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit – GIZ). She holds two Master Degrees in International Development from the University of Utrecht and the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Prior to joining GIZ, Lena has worked for Oxfam Novib, focusing on budget transparency and accountability in West Africa.
Lena has held several positions at GIZ. She was seconded to the Collaborative Africa Budget Reform Initiative (CABRI) in South Africa, where she worked as PFM advisor. She also coordinated the German support to the IMF Regional Technical Assistance Centers. Currently, Lena is working in the Good Financial Governance (GFG) team in the department Good Governance and Human Rights. Her focus topics are GFG in sector ministries, inequality and financial accountability.
Lena is married and has a 14 month old son. She currently lives in Frankfurt, Germany.
VIORICA NECLEA, Lead consultant at the Ministry of Finance of Moldova
Ms. Neclea has rich work experience in budgeting, as well as in formulation and implementation of different Public Finance Management (PFM) reform strategies in Moldova. After graduation from the Academy of Economic Studies in Moldova (1994) she started to work for the Ministry of Finance. For five years, she has been coordinating the budget issues in the area of social protection. Starting in 2000, Ms. Neclea got involved in several external technical assistance projects as a national consultant, assisting the Ministry of Finance and line ministries in the implementation of medium-term budgeting, program budgeting and other PFM reforms in the country.
Collaboration with different development partners (WB, DFID, UNDP) and participation at different training events (PEMPAL, CEF, JVI) helped her further develop and strengthen capacities on budgeting and public expenditure management. In the last five years she was strongly involved in the development of the new Law on Public Finance and Fiscal Responsibility, as well as in the design of the new budget planning methodology, focusing on budget sustainability and program-based budgeting.
Currently, Ms. Neclea is lead consultant to the division for Budgetary and Fiscal Policies Coordination and Generalization at the Ministry of Finance of Moldova. She is responsible for the legal and methodological framework for budget planning, for the organization and preparation of the medium-term budget framework, as well as for the coordination of Ministry of Finance training activities for central and local public authorities on the new legal framework and budget formulation methodology, putting a special focus on medium-term planning and program-based budgeting.
Ms. Neclea is married and has three children – two sons and a daughter.