PFMStaffGuidance-WorldBank.docVIP

Public Financial Management (PFM) Work Staff Guidance This guidance note provides broad guidance to staff in undertaking public financial management work based on a distillation of lessons learned into good practice. It provides a framework, with identification of some essential elements, but deliberately avoids being overly prescriptive to leave scope for variation in application. The strengthened framework focuses on public financial management work, and not public expenditure policy. Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Introduction 1 Public Financial Management (PFM) Country Team 2 Country PFM Strategy and Action Plan 3 Benchmarking and monitoring progress 5 Sequencing reform over time 6 Packaging analytic work 7 Program of work 9 Introduction The large amount of diagnostic work and lessons learned in public financial management (PFM) reform afford an opportunity to highlight and mainstream good practice in supporting country PFM systems. This Guidance note encourages a strengthened approach to PFM by synthesizing and distilling some of the good practices that have already been underway within the regions. While no single country example fully captures the principles that this guidance seeks to promote, there are elements of it that are reflected in part in various country work programs. Five principles have emerged that reflect good practice in PFM work and the mainstreaming of these approaches will have implications for the Bank-Government dialogue, the work outputs that are generated, and the internal work processes themselves. The principles, reflected throughout the following guidance, are: PFM work should facilitate and encourage country leadership in setting/managing the PFM reform strategy and action plan. PFM diagnostic work should be conducted in an integrated and coordinated manner, drawing upon the distinct competencies of the PFM country team and other donors, with the timing and scope determined largely by country needs. PFM work