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

320 Daniel Tommasi
a two-pronged approach should be developed. First, internal control procedures
should be implemented within spending units, and special budget
execution procedures (such as the special payment order procedure discussed
earlier) should be eliminated. Second, budget execution procedures and
ministry of finance controls should be simplified.
Cash management and in-year financial planning should be strengthened
in most countries. The policies stated in the budget should not be
altered during budget implementation. Reliance on arbitrarily determined
cash control systems, notably on cash budgeting systems, should be reduced,
through preparing a more realistic budget and controlling commitments in
a transparent manner.
To increase efficiency in cash management, governments in countries
that still have fragmented banking arrangements for public expenditure
management should consider implementing a TSA.
Strong political willingness to ensure that the budget is implemented
according to the policies adopted by the legislature and to enforce the existing
rules with rigor will be required to bring about lasting improvements in the
public expenditure management system in Africa.
Notes
1. For example, allotments of appropriations to remote spending units (called delegation
of appropriations) are reported as commitments in several francophone budget
systems.
2. Some anglophone countries name the expenditure at the verification stage
commitment/liability, while the forward tranches of the legal commitment are
named deferred commitment or forward commitment.
3. Various terms, such as program authorization, commitment appropriation, and
commitment authorization, are used. The European Commission uses the term
commitment appropriation for its own budget.
4. In the IMF (2001) Government Finance Statistics Manual, the net lending/borrowing
balance is defined as equal to the net acquisition of financial assets minus the net
incurrence of liabilities. The incurred liabilities do not include the commitments
related to undelivered goods and services.
5. See IMF (2001, chapter 3, paragraphs 3.44 to 3.53) for further discussion of this
issue.
6. This office is not to be confused with the accounting officer of line ministries in British
Commonwealth countries, who is the head of the line ministries’ administration.
7. Some countries cancel the unpaid payment orders after a certain number of years.
8. This French term is frequently used in the financial regulations of British
Commonwealth countries. In the majority of francophone budget systems,
the term virement refers only to the transfers between budget items that change the
economic nature of the expenditure.