SPB Newsfeed: CEF Launches Capacity Development Project on Strategic Planning and Budgeting

The CEF is happy to announce the start of the Strategic Planning and Budgeting (SBP) project for beneficiaries in South East Europe. The SBP covers a series of training and networking activities. Meetings with beneficiaries are underway, with courses to begin in May.

The CEF will deliver the SBP project in a two-year period through March 2015. The beneficiaries are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey. The SBP targets officials involved in strategic planning and budgeting processes at ministries of finance, budget-intensive line ministries, and, to some degree, central planning authorities, central banks, and macroeconomic research institutes.

The project aims to strengthen the quality and consistency of strategic documents, macroeconomic and fiscal frameworks, and policy coordination linked to fiscal impact assessment of structural reforms. The project contributes to improving governance for growth of SEE countries by strengthening their capacity to design and implement medium-term macrofiscal policies, and thus to achieve the goals of the SEE 2020 strategy as established by beneficiaries.

The SPB promotes setting up networks among officials to share good practices, to achieve stronger involvement of experts from SEE countries in capacity development, to strengthen policy coordination processes, and to improve the quality of strategic documents. As part of the CEF’s efforts to stimulate learning and regional cooperation, the project serves to exchange best practice in the region, to complement beneficiaries’ domestic efforts, and to stimulate beneficiaries’ learning through participatory training and networking activities.

The SPB workshops are framed by core seminars and policy dialogues that bring together senior managers and top representatives of beneficiary governments. Training activities will be delivered in close cooperation with the International Monetary Fund’s Fiscal Affairs Department, the Regional School of Public Administration, and the Joint Vienna Institute. On top of delivering training to the participants, the SPB will support ongoing dialogue among stakeholders and help identify options for further networking and capacity development.

The project is supported through the European Commission’s Multi-beneficiary Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA). It evolved from a regional initiative of beneficiaries in 2008 as a part of the CEF’s program Building Capacities in Policy Design and Implementation. This program supports the public finance reform process by strengthening analysis, design, implementation, and coordination of medium-term economic and fiscal policies. It has been developed by the CEF with input from the EC and close involvement of international financial institutions and experts across South East Europe.

CEF Deputy Director Jana Repanšek in this occasion commented, "We are very happy to receive European Commission’s support for the implementation of the SPB. In the next two years we will pay our special attention on how to activate regional expertise that can be used in a much needed follow-up project to address capacities for strategic planning and budgeting at line ministries."