Public Sector Governance and Accountability Series: Budgeting and ...

Organizational arrangements
Cash planning is generally coordinated at a technical level by a division of
the treasury department. This division should work closely with the tax
administration department or the division of the treasury department that
is responsible for debt management. A cash management committee chaired
by the head of the treasury department and including officials from the
budget department, tax administration, customs services, and the central
bank should be set up.
Strengthening African Budget Execution Systems
Budget Execution 319
Generally, the weaknesses in budget execution are caused not by the budget
systems themselves, but by the way they operate. Actions should be directed
toward enhancing budget discipline and improving accountability of all
those responsible for budget execution and reporting.
Getting the basics right is particularly important. Both to ensure efficient
program implementation and to keep expenditure under control, the
most pressing needs are to strengthen the arrangements for reporting and
accounting. Whatever the basis of accounting, improvements in bookkeeping
and accounting procedures are generally required. Budget execution reports
should be regularly produced. Budget execution monitoring systems need to
cover all expenditures, whatever their economic nature or their financing
source, and all special funds or procedures. Expenditures should be monitored
at each stage of the expenditure cycle. Doing so will require setting up
monitoring and control systems in many anglophone African countries. In
the francophone countries that face arrears problems, reports according to
the budget classification should be produced at the payment stage, not only
at the payment order and commitment stages, as is currently done.
Clear definitions of tasks and responsibilities are required. For efficient
program implementation, the ministry of finance should avoid excessive
interference in line ministries’ budget management. This issue is particularly
important in the francophone budget systems, but it is important in other
countries as well.
Internal control systems should be strengthened in most countries. This
improvement includes setting up or reinforcing financial control procedures
within spending units and more generally strengthening the different management
systems, such as the personnel and the procurement management
systems. Sanctions should be applied on those contravening regulations,
and the results should be made public. In francophone budget systems,