Module One: Managing Public Finances

MODULE ONE: MANAGING PUBLIC FINANCES

This module contributes to strengthening public financial management reforms in ways that recognize and emphasize the impact of managing public resources on both economic outcomes and service delivery for citizens and the enabling role that public financial management plays in helping to achieve goverrnment policies. The module supports innovative activities in public financial management (i) at the country level by funding the development and scaling up of new approaches, including improved efficiency of spending, climate responsiveness, pandemic readiness, or agility, and (ii) ath the global and regional levels by capturing lessons from novel approaches and disseminating this as shared knowledge.

When public financial management reforms do not result in the desired changes and are not oriented to bottlenecks in economic management and service delivery that clearly exhibit the need to address underlying problems, generic reforms may not be targeted to specific challenges. The module applies innovative approaches, supports reform processes that identify and address the underlying causes of these challenges, and achieves greater impact and sustainable development that results in a wider range of government institutions. The key to this is to address public financial management bottlenecks to service delivery.

There are two components of Module One:

Fiscal and Expenditure Management

The budget is one of the most potent policy tools available to governments. The budget process provides an opportunity to fund and de-fund policies and services and provide incentives for delivery while reflecting macroeconomic and fiscal priorities.

Public Investment Management

Public investment management and governance of infrastructure require specific attention. Even before the pandemic, it had become visible that public investment management is a critical link between government use of public finances and the achievement of broader delivery objectives. The aim of both public financial management and public investment management is to produce better service delivery, including better infrastructure governance. This is a particular area of growing attention, as the Sustainable Development Goals require a significant effort to ramp up investments in infrastructure, including energy and internet accessibility.

Module One Overview