Analysis of needs and processes Data collection Analysis of needs and processes

Data needs Budget unit Public Accounts CEPEX EFU / donors Planned donor disbursements and project expenditures Actual donor disbursements and project expenditures Classified as per national chart of accounts, specifying nature of expenditures, beneficiary programme/sub-programme, grant/loan, disbursement modality (direct payment, cash transfer) Public Accounts Actual donor disbursements and project expenditures, classified per national chart of accounts, specifying grant/loan and disbursement modality Projects cash situation, accounts payable, accounts receivable CEPEX Non financial: progress on activities and procurement issues Financial: donor disbursements, project expenditures (total per programme/project); project cash flow EFU / donors Donor disbursements (total disbursements per programme/project) Recipient budget agencies All financial and non financial information, at planning stage (ex-ante) and ex post Focus on what gvt can do to improve data collection mechanisms, make them more reliable and efficient Nevertheless, this doesn’t solve the problem of donors/projects/programs not reporting or not reporting with enough detail

Data collection mechanisms Budget unit Collects information only for budget preparation Data collected from budget agencies Form sent out with Budget Call Circular (mid-may), to be sent to NBU by mid-june Public Accounts Data collected from budget agencies + from donors + from programmes/projects Form sent out on a quarterly basis CEPEX Data collected from programmes/projects Form sent out quarterly EFU / donors Data collected from donors Data up-dated on a continuous basis on web-based DAD

Main weaknesses within MINECOFIN Overlapping requests: different units request the same information to various stakeholders No information sharing: no unit uses information collected by another unit Reporting fatigue, non-reporting Inconsistencies No quality check of information collected No common definition/standards No division of labour: each unit collects all the information they need, even if other units would be more competent to do so Low quality and incoherent financial information

Main weaknesses outside MINECOFIN Within donors, between different agencies Ex: US DoD, Sweden Police From donors to recipient Ex: GTZ, China; Direct payments Use of national chart of accounts From public entities to parent ministry Ex: RRA, NIS From budget agencies to MINECOFIN Ex: EC project in support to water in Bugesera Ex: Small projects Budget agencies also often bypassed by minecofin

Impact on the budget process No comprehensive information for budget preparation (budget agencies & MINECOFIN) transparency allocative efficiency alignment No comprehensive information on Development budget execution No comprehensive information in Financial Statements

Proposals - MINECOFIN One entry point in MINECOFIN Involved every time MINECOFIN is signatory to a project, and systematically informed every time an externally-financed project is signed (by districts, by autonomous agencies) Unique project identification number Key background information on each project to be shared with all other stakeholders Including assessment of « criteria for putting aid on budget » Single entry point should ensure information on all newly signed projects is available to NBU at the moment of budget preparation, specifying whether project should be on budget or not

Proposals – Budget Agencies Do not by-pass budget agencies Budget Agencies should be the ones in charge of consolidating all information on the projects under their responsibility and transmit this information to MINECOFIN They should be systematically involved and signatory to projects under their responsibility The Chief Budget Manager of the Budget Agency should be the one giving ‘visa’ on project disbursements (not MINECOFIN) AS PER OBL

Budget preparation process Donors/project managers: Ensure budget agencies have information in time (june) Ensure project budgets are also presented following national chart of accounts (at signature) Ensure detailed information on direct payments abroad as well as project expenditures in country is provided on quarterly basis to budget agency Ensure all entities within a donor are informed and coordinated NBU: More transparent decisions on « cutting » of externally-financed projects involving CEPEX and recipient budget agencies What about difficult donors Single entry point

Budget Execution process Best practice: MINECOFIN to ‘visa’ all donor disbursements to project accounts Chief budget manager of recipient entity to ‘visa’ all project expenditures including direct payments Budgetmaster should become the unique tool for collecting financial information on project/programme revenues (donor disbursements) and expenditures CEPEX to continue supporting project implementation, procurement, and monitoring non-financial implementation

Reporting & accounting Financial statements Data collected (in future from Budget master) should allow production of budget execution report Budget execution report (produced by NBU) to include information on external finance Possible for CEPEX to use that information ? Added value of DAD in collecting financial information questionnable