The Accountant Sep-Oct 2016√(2)

GOVERNANCE
PUBLIC FINANCE
MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVES
By John Ndunyu, johnndunyu@kpmg.co.ke
PFM capacity building and
professionalisation
This article is derived from a presentation I
recently gave at the 23rd annual conference
for Accountant Generals from Eastern
and Southern Africa, ESAAG. I thought
I should share these thoughts with a wider
audience. The whole issue about Public
Finance Management (PFM) is one of
stewardship. A few of us are mandated by
the wider population to manage our
collective resources for our common good.
Think about your household. At the family
level, finances must be properly managed,
planned for, mobilised, effectively and
efficiently spent if the family is to thrive.
If the people responsible for doing this,
usually the parents, do not undertake this
responsibility diligently, the family will
often experience cash problems; children
will perhaps not continue their education
for financial reasons or there will be
challenges in accessing quality medical
care, among many other challenges one
can think of.
It is the same with nations. Stewardship
requires that those we have chosen to
manage our collective resources on our
behalf do so efficiently and effectively
to improve our welfare; improvement
of this welfare happens at an individual
level as well as for entire communities. It
includes access to quality healthcare,
education, security, housing, clean
environment, good infrastructure such
as roads, communication etc. If resources
are prudently managed in a manner that
adds value to our economic activities,
we experience growth in GDP and in
revenues which avails more resources for
provision of services to mwananchi. This
in turn leads to satisfaction amongst the
populace who become more supportive
of government policies and efforts. It is a
continuous cycle.
This is the objective of PFM; to
benefit citizens of a country. Good
public finance practices become enablers
for government policy implementation,
efficient and effective resource allocation
and use, fiscal discipline and transparency
and accountability.
In this article, I will confine myself
to capacity building of those we have
entrusted with the responsibility to
manage our collective resources.
What is capacity building?
A number of organisations, including
CIDA (Canada), The European
Commission (EC), UNDP and GTZ
(Germany) have definitions of capacity
building in relation to public finance
36 SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2016