Ukraine Lviv City GRPFM 2022 /Gender Annex/
Annex 5 PEFA 2022 Ukraine Lviv City Gender Responsive PFM Assessment
The PEFA 2022 Ukraine Lviv City Gender Responsive PFM Report is an Annex to the PEFA 2022 Ukraine Lviv City Sub-national Assessment.
Annex 5.1 Introduction
Purpose
The purpose of the gender-responsive PFM assessment is to gather information on the budgeting and reporting systems of the City Government of Lviv in order to assess the extent to which public financial management responds to the needs of gender (male and female) and other vulnerable groups in the city.
This is one the first gender-responsive PFM assessment at the sub-national government level. This assessment not only provides a basis for aligning the Swiss SECO ELocFin project design with a gender-responsive PFM mindset, but it also offers additional insights, which may be used by SECO and other development partners to get a better understanding of underlying concepts.
The assessment team used the Supplementary Framework for Assessing Gender-responsive Public Financial Management published by the PEFA Secretariat in January 2020.
The fieldwork was carried out at the same time the main PEFA assessment was conducted in order to maximise the use of time and also reduce the level of interaction with government staff due to their busy schedule. Furthermore, some of the information gathered during the main PEFA assessment was used to assess the GRPFM; additional data was also gathered where necessary.
The Ministries of Finance, Education and Health are the lead central government agencies promoting gender-responsive budgeting with support from Swiss SECO, UN Women, European Union, and the World Bank. At this stage, very limited effort is exerted by the Lviv City Government in terms of promoting gender-responsive PFM.
The GRPFM report (annexed to the main PEFA report) was subjected to the same PEFA Check requirements in terms of peer review and quality assurance.
Background
The central government of Ukraine is advanced in terms of the promulgation and development of gender equality laws, regulations and procedures/processes. These laws and procedures are equally applicable at the local government level. In spite of this, the sub-national government of Lviv City is yet to include these procedures and processes into the entire budget cycle. The table below (Table A-5.1) provides a list of legislative instruments and policies adopted by the central government, applicable at the sub-national levels but yet to be actualised. At the city government level, it appears there is less political will as well as inadequate technical capacity for gender-responsive budgeting and reporting.
Table A-5.1: Legal and policy framework for gender equality
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Legal and regulatory framework for the promotion of gender equality
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Annex 5.2 Overview of assessment findings
Chart 1 below provides a graphical representation of the gender-responsive PFM performance. The summary of the narrative performance is provided in Annex 5.3.
The overall performance of the Gender-responsive Public Finance Management is poor. The Lviv City Government has not yet introduced any gender-responsive PFM policy framework into the budget formulation, execution and reporting mechanism.
The City Government does not analyse proposed changes in expenditure and revenue policies with information on gender impacts (GRPFM-1 rated ‘D’); this is also in line with PI-14.2 in the main PEFA report which assesses the fiscal impact of policy proposals, rated ‘D’. In the main PEFA report, public investment management performed averagely with an overall score of ‘C’. Nevertheless, there is no gender-responsive analysis to underscore its impact on public investment proposals nor economic analysis of those investment proposals (GRPFM-2 rated ‘D’).
The budget circular issued to key spending units does not provide any information on gender related issues (GRPFM-3 rated ‘D’). This performance does not correspond with PI-17 which was rated ‘C+’ in the main PEFA report. It appears that the directive from the state government regarding the inclusion of gender issues in the budget process is yet to take root across local governments. While public access to fiscal information shows good performance in the main PEFA report (PI-9 rated ‘A’), budget proposal documentation submitted to the City Council does not contain policy priorities that promote gender equality (GRPFM-4 rated ‘D’). There is no doubt that information on gender equality would have been published if it were available, since the City Government is keen at ensuring transparency and public accountability. There is also no sex-disaggregated performance information on service delivery (GRPFM- 5 rated ‘D’) even though performance information on service delivery is available and published (PI-8 in the main PEFA report rated ‘B+’).
The absence of gender-responsive budget proposal documentation implied that tracking of expenditure for gender equality is non-existent (GRPFM-6 rated ‘D’). This compared with PI-4 in the main report, which was rated ‘D’. The absence of expenditure tracking for gender equality also led to non-reporting based on gender (GRPFM-7 rated ‘D’). In the main PEFA report, PI-28 and PI-29 were all rated ‘D+’; however, public access to fiscal information (PI-9) was rated ‘A’. While PI-8.4 in the main report performed well with a score of ‘B’, it did not reflect in the performance of GRPFM-8 which was rated ‘D’; the evaluations do not assess the gender-responsiveness of service delivery.
At this stage, there is no gender-responsive budgeting; therefore, the scrutiny of the budget by the City Council is limited to the information received and contained in the budget proposals (GRPFM-9 rated ‘D’), compared with PI-18 in the main report rated ‘C+’.
Going forward, the Lviv City Government plans to push gender-responsive PFM agenda by soliciting support from the state government and development partners to train city government officials on gender-responsive PFM. There is however no methodological guideline on GRPFM with specific timelines to accomplish this task.