Enhancing Budgetary Outcomes: Adopting Commonwealth Best Practice

Kaifala Marah, Adviser, Public Expenditure Management, Commonwealth Secretariat

Equipping senior budget officers and managers with the necessary skills to meet new challenges in public financial management is the focus of a Commonwealth training programme beginning soon.

The programme 'Enhancing Budgetary Outcomes: Adopting Commonwealth Best Practices' will be held from 27 March to 7 April 2006 in Singapore and has attracted more than 30 participants from Commonwealth countries.

Kaifala Marah, Adviser, Public Expenditure Management, in the Commonwealth Secretariat's Governance and Institutional Development Division, said the main thrust of the seminar is "to enhance the capacity of senior budget officers and managers to conceptualise, control and manage changing trends in public financial management and country-owned institutional re-engineering in the public sector."

Mr Marah said the seminar also seeks to introduce senior officers to the Secretariat's 'Guidelines for Public Financial Management Reform' adopted by Commonwealth Heads of Government in Malta, in November 2005. At their 2003 summit in Abuja, Heads of Government committed themselves to institutionalising transparent and accountable public expenditure management systems in member countries.

The programme is the second in a series for senior budget officers and managers of public expenditure, and is organised by the Secretariat's Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation in partnership with the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs through its Singapore Co-operation Programme, under the auspices of the Singapore-Commonwealth Third Country Training Programme.

 

CNIS - Commonwealth News and Information Service, Issue 277, 22 March 2006

Secretariat Links:

• Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation