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

Strengthening Public Expenditure Management in Africa 407
expand and contract easily as and when required. Accountability will be
provided through the same external audit court and general state inspectorate
of Algeria as for any other public enterprise. However, in the particular case of
the CNED, a special “review of the reviewers” should be provided, in the form
of a substantive audit of the technical quality of CNED activities, to be conducted
periodically by an independent and external entity.
Even though the CNED is expected to be active for a number of years, the
logic of its creation is inherently as a temporary structure, to transition from
a system without effective quality controls to a system in which such effective
controls do exist and are exercised primarily where they should belong—in
the line ministries themselves.
Source: Extracted and adapted from World Bank forthcoming.
In countries where responsibilities for capital budgeting are separate from
those for the current budget, as an initial priority require joint reviews of
the two components of the budget at each stage of budget preparation
and at each administrative level.
Pay some attention to budgeting capacity in at least one or two line ministries
rather than only in the core ministries of finance and planning, and
begin selected budgeting capacity-building activities in those ministries.
Subsequently, strengthening budget preparation requires the following:
Derive the sectoral spending ceilings from the preparation of a macroeconomic
framework and the appropriate multiyear expenditure programming
(as previously described).
Devise positive budgetary incentives for ministries that submit more
timely multiyear cost estimates of ongoing policies and programs better
linked to sectoral government policies.
Establish and enforce rules for better cooperation between the core ministries
of finance and planning (or the different departments in a unified
ministry) and for vertical coordination between the core ministries and
the line ministries.
Seek appropriate participation of civil society in budget preparation,
beyond customary legislative hearings.
Review the distribution of responsibilities in budget preparation and the
structure of controls with a view to giving the line ministries sufficient
authority to formulate their programs and making them accountable for
implementation.