Seminar for Senior Budget Officers and Managers

"Public expenditure management is a new initiative that will enrich our public sector development portfolio ..." Professor Victor Ayeni

Ensuring that public expenditure produces positive results through greater transparency and accountability is the focus of a two-week Commonwealth-sponsored seminar for senior budget officers and managers. The seminar, which bears the theme 'Enhancing Budgetary Outcomes', begins on 30 May 2005. It is co-funded by the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation (CFTC) and the Singapore Co-operation Programme of the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The seminar aims to expose the senior budget officers and managers to the results-oriented public expenditure management experience of Singapore. Twenty-five participants will be taken through strategic initiatives, such as creating a friendly budgetary environment through the use of incentives and reward schemes. This practice has been geared towards enhancing productivity in the public sector.

The programme will examine reform strategies and effective finance management skills, including internal control mechanisms, reporting procedures, procurement regulations and oversight functions. Improvements in these areas would contribute to public expenditure reform.

Professor Victor Ayeni, Director of the Governance and Institutional Development Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat which manages this CFTC programme, said: "Public expenditure management is a new initiative that will enrich our public sector development portfolio. During the seminar, participants will be taken through internationally accepted principles and standards of budgeting by capturing managerial details such as the importance of resource management, accountability, transparency, monitoring and control. This involves looking at a host of strategic initiatives ingrained in the Singapore management stream, and includes resource budgeting and accounting."

The seminar aims to enhance the capacity of senior budget officers and managers to conceptualise, control and manage changing trends in public financial management and institutional re-engineering in the public sector.

It will study the reform experience of Singapore and look at the variety of mechanisms used to influence behaviour at middle and lower levels of management for effective and efficient budgetary outcomes. The participants will have the opportunity to adopt new ideas, skills and management techniques to enhance the work environment and eliminate unnecessary spending.

 

CNIS - the Commonwealth News and Information Service Issue 236, 25 May 2005

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