How to Plan Financing and Funding of Sector Reforms
Without a proper financing mechanism, public reforms can easily remain only good intentions, or even worse, produce additional instabilities or crises. The challenge is not only to find good sources of financing, but to make sound financial calculations, costing and projections of reform measures. It’s not easy to calculate the future, but it is worth investing the effort.
How to do it? What could be a good approach for a sound financial design of reforms? We hereby offer a report of the World Bank that outlays a framework for addressing this challenge. The document From Panic and Neglect to Investing in Health Security: Financing Pandemic Preparedness at a National Level proposes ways in which national governments and development partners can finance investments in country and regional preparedness.
This report suggests a framework of assessing the current pandemic preparedness as a starting point, design plan of actions (reforms), cost and then develops an investment case. It would articulate the political and economic arguments for integrating a costed plan into national budget cycles and committing resources to reinforce and sustain preparedness, plus a change management strategy to engage and coordinate relevant stakeholders.
Identifying and mobilizing sustainable financing is key – in many countries, this will be achieved through giving greater priority to funding preparedness within existing budgets. But in other countries, it may be necessary to explore ways to increase fiscal space. Engaging the private sector in reinforcing and financing preparedness is one of the possibilities.
Regardless of your sector, we invite you to take a look at the methods proposed by this work of the World Bank Working Group of Financing Preparedness and get ideas how to plan the financing and funding of reforms you have on your agenda.