SPB Newsfeed: Strategic Planning and Budgeting Project Concluding: Main Achievements

FRESH OFF THE PRINTER: A newspaper highlighting the Strategic Planning and Budgeting (SPB) Project’s main achievements was issued today while the digital version is available here.

The SPB project has been funded by the European Union and implemented by CEF, in cooperation with project partners: the International Monetary Fund, Regional School of Public Administration and Joint Vienna Institute. It is successfully concluding with the final two events taking place in mid-September. Altogether we have delivered 21 EU-funded learning and networking activities since 2013, attended by more than 400 participants.

Ms. Jana Repanšek, CEF Deputy Director says: “Our work during the project implementation has been highly rewarding. Through a series of trainings we have experienced the dynamic capacity development of countries in South East Europe that are preparing for EU accession. We have learned a lot from local and international experts, and have better understood the specific needs of beneficiaries and how to address them.”

The project has been developed on the initiative of our beneficiaries to help strengthen countries` knowledge and skills in responding to the European Commission’s macrofiscal surveillance requests.

The SPB project helped:

• Raise awareness among top-level officials coordinating and contributing to medium-term macrofiscal frameworks about the need and opportunities to improve those frameworks
• Strengthen capacities, and share experiences and good practices in the preparation of medium-term macrofiscal frameworks
• Create networks among officials involved in the preparation of medium-term macrofiscal frameworks
• Identify and train experts from beneficiary countries and involve them in the project`s capacity development activities
• Improve policy coordination processes among institutions coordinating and contributing to medium-term macrofiscal framework

During implementation we have been collecting feedback from the beneficiaries to get firsthand information about the learning and networking results. We also talked to beneficiaries about their personal and institutions experience ‘success’ stories. To this end, we followed the Wenger-Trayner conceptual framework on value created by training activities for participants, their organizations, and stakeholders. Read what project participants say on the project in the newspaper.