Commonwealth Secretariat Workshop: ‘Leveraging Debt Management for Effective Public Financial Management: Framework for Interfacing Debt Management Systems with IFMIS’.

The Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) Program is proud to make an important contribution to the debate with the recent Stocktaking Study on PFM Diagnostic Instruments, produced under the auspices of the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness with support from the PEFA Program.

As an update to the 2004 PEFA’s mapping exercise “Assessing and Reforming Public Financial Management: A New Approach”, it identifies and describes the current, internationally used - or in an advanced stage of development - analytical/diagnostic tools in the Public Financial Management area and identifies knowledge gaps where custodians of assessment tools could improve collaboration and reduce transaction costs.

The study provides a number of entry points for the future, towards better alignment and harmonization of assessment work of PFM country systems and greater government leadership.

More specifically, it makes concrete proposals for development partners, professional bodies and government counterparts on how to streamline the coverage of different PFM instruments, avoid overlaps and enhance collaboration at country level to strengthen government capacity in the diagnostic process.