Final Report: Strategic Planning and Budgeting

LEARNING AND NETWORKING PROVIDED 9
Responding to the Need
The SPB project builds on needs assessments that we
have been organizing since 2008 in preparation for Building
Capacities for Policy Design and Implementation, a
major program initiated by our constituency. At large, the
SPB beneficiaries were at that time characterized by the
following circumstances (or a subset of them):
• Alleviation of the aftermath of financial crisis
• Implementation of a deferred structural reforms agenda
• Fiscal consolidation and search for fiscal space, e.g.
for new public investments
• Change of economic growth model from a rather capital-intensive
to a more export-oriented one
• Promotion of economic governance and institutional
capacities for EU accession
• Increased macrofiscal surveillance, especially by the
European Commission
In 2010-2011, needs assessments were carried out by a
Task Force that we facilitated; representatives from beneficiary
institutions joined forces with regional experts
from the International Monetary Fund’s Fiscal Affairs
Department, Joint Vienna Institute, and the University of
Ljubljana. In 2012, a further needs assessment looked
in depth at the fiscal impact assessment of structural
reforms.
To ensure that the activities are in line with beneficiaries’
needs, we reconfirmed the envisaged agenda in the
initiation phase, and regularly consulted beneficiary and
partner institutions, in particular via the Project Steering
Committee.
The following major challenges had been identified with
respect to SPB beneficiaries’ capacity to design and implement
medium-term macroeconomic and fiscal policy:
• Ineffective medium-term macroeconomic framework:
need for strengthened forecasts and scenarios; insufficient
macroeconomic policy analysis and design
• Ineffective medium-term fiscal framework: medium-term
budget framework not fully operational;
need to introduce fiscal rules and strengthen fiscal
institutions
• Insufficient incorporation of structural reforms: lack
of capacity to carry out impact assessment of structural
reforms; underdeveloped sectoral fiscal programming
capacity
• Weak integration of national processes and reporting
to the European Commission: discrepancies in
quality of medium-term planning documents; need for
strengthened strategic policy coordination among key
stakeholders