SPB Newsfeed: CEF Travelling the Region to Introduce Strategic Planning and Budgeting Project

In March 2013, the CEF launched Strategic Planning and Budgeting (SBP), a training and networking project for beneficiaries in South East Europe. The CEF staff recently made visibility tours in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia, and Turkey to meet with around hundred beneficiaries and relevant stakeholders.We visited institutions involved in SPB processes: ministries of finance, intensive budget users and central coordinating authorities, and local EU and IMF staff who contribute to public financial management reforms. The visits evoked much enthusiasm and interest in the SBP. Follow-up meetings with further beneficiaries are underway, for example at the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington DC.

Visibility tour consultations fall into the category of the CEF’s frequent exchange of information with its beneficiaries about the needed learning agenda, and efforts to facilitate regional cooperation. We informed beneficiaries about the SPB training and networking events to be delivered with EU funding over the next two years. We discussed also participation options for institutions, and identified capacity needs that cannot be addressed via multi-beneficiary efforts but possibly through other capacity development activities in individual countries or follow-up projects. Meetings also provided an opportunity to discuss domestic and international capacity development efforts that are complementary to SPB.

The CEF invited the institutions that coordinate macro-fiscal frameworks in the beneficiary countries to nominate a representative to the SBP Project Steering Committee, which will advise the CEF on the implementation of the project. Intensive budget users identified so far are invited to participate especially in events organized in late 2013 and in 2014. These events will address capacity needs related to their contribution to macro-fiscal frameworks.

Though the SPB focuses on capacity development in public financial management, we met also with central authorities that coordinate the preparation of strategic plans, such as the General Secretariats or Prime Minister’s Offices, to assure a comprehensive understanding of SBP processes in the beneficiary countries.

The CEF met with more than 130 beneficiaries and relevant stakeholders, who confirmed their willingness to cooperate and coordinate. [Beneficiary institutions that have not yet been visited will be informed via other channels of communication (or visited later on).]