SPB Newsfeed: Medium-Term Budgeting Workshop
The CEF organized a workshop on medium-term budgeting. Practitioners and professionals with extensive national and international experience shared lessons learned in both advanced and less advanced economies and the challenges that need to be taken into account when designing medium-term budget frameworks. The workshop was delivered with the help of several international experts from the IMF, and the Dutch and Swedish ministries of finance.
The objective of the workshop has been to help participants better understand objectives and features of multi-year budgeting, identify the challenges and bottlenecks in these reforms, and share experiences with colleagues in other South East European countries about how to overcome these challenges.
The workshop has been designed for mid to senior level officials who actively deal with budget formulation, strategic planning and budget decision-making. Participants had to work in groups to discuss country specifics in medium-term budgeting reforms and will take part in simulations of medium-term budget preparation and negotiation exercise.
The workshop focused on the lessons learned in both advanced and less advanced economies and the challenges that need to be taken into account when designing medium-term budget frameworks. It first addressed the theoretical background, key concepts and definitions of medium-term budgeting. Afterwards the focus shifted to medium-term budgeting in practice with participants discussing international reform experiences, for example, with fiscal rules and building a medium-term budget framework from a top-down perspective.
The workshop has been delivered as part of the CEF's SPB project, which is financed by the European Union and has the objective to help strengthening beneficiary countries’ capacity to design and implement medium-term macrofiscal policy.
