January – March 2008
ON-GOING PROJECTS
Sub-projects of the USAID/CFP Public Finance and Budgeting Project:
Technical assistance to the Northern Caucasus Regions
Republic of Dagestan has become one out of ten winners who will receive subsidies from the federal budget to implement Regional Finance Reform Program. The CFP assisted Ministry of Finance of Dagestan in drafting the program. The program is focused on incorporation of performance-based budgeting techniques in the budget process on regional level and on improvement of quality of public services that the region delivers in accordance with its expenditure obligations.
Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria were pilot regions for the project in 2005 – 2007, and for the 2008 – 2010 time period the CFP selected another two regions, Republics of Northern Osetia – Alania and of Adygheya as new pilot regions.
On the 27th of February the CFP introduced the project to the Government of Northern Osetia – Alania and to the Heads of municipal districts. ‘Implementation of this project will allow to sensationally improve quality of public finance management in the Republic’, says the leading regional paper Osetia – Svobodnyi Vzglyad.
On the 27th of March the CFP visited Adygheya to meet with regional Ministry of Finance and agree on the timeline and deliverables of the project in the region.
Implementation of administrative and fiscal reforms on local level (in the pilot municipalities)
The CFP implements this sub-project in the pilot municipalities of the Far East Federal District. In 2007 such municipalities included cities of Ussuriisk (Primorsky Krai) and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (former Kamchatskaya oblast, and currently Kamchatka Krai). The CFP has fulfilled the agreed tasks in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and selected the city of Artiom (Primorky Krai) as a new pilot municipality for 2008.
On March 13 -14 the CFP organized and delivered training seminar on Management of Finance Resource on Local Level to the Far East municipalities. The seminar was attended by 94 people from 9 Far East regions. The CFP experts presented new trends in federal fiscal policy that related to the public services delivering on local level. They also presented new amendments to the Budget Code, in particular those that might be important for municipalities.
COMPLETED PROJECTS
The CFP assisted Finance Department of the Lipetsk Oblast Administration in drafting regional finance reform program. This region, as well as Dagestan, became one of the ten winners who will receive federal subsidies to implement the program. Within the framework of the project the CFP delivered training to the departments of the Lipetsk Oblast Administration in such issues as development of public services standards, restructuring budgetary net, transition to performance-based budgeting, etc. The CFP training allowed Lipetsk Oblast to start implementing the regional finance reform program even before it receives federal subsidy.
SEMINARS AND CONFERENCES
On March 12 – 14 the CFP conducted a series of training seminars for the government of Kazakhstan. Those seminars were arranged by the Ministry of Economics and Budgetary Planning of Kazakhstan with the goal to change national policy towards performance-based management and budgeting. The next training will be delivered in April 2008.
On March 25 – 27 the CFP and the Institute for Transition Economics conducted seminar and round-tables within the framework of the Technical Assistance to the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation in Improvement of Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations The goal of those events was to assist MoF in maintaining dialog with regional and local finance departments on such issues as fiscal federalism and improvement quality and predictability of finance management.
TOP ISSUES
Ministry of Finance is developing a new conception of intergovernmental fiscal relations for 2009 -2011 to further improve the system of transfers from federal budget to regional budgets. The CFP assists the MoF in drafting methodology and developing formulas to calculate the transferred amounts.
Another top issues relays to reduction of Value Added Tax to 12 – 13 percentage. Read comments on it of Alexander Deryugin, Deputy Director for Consulting Services, the CFP (in Russian)