Technical assistance to the North Caucasus regions
The CFP project is one of the components of the Plan of Action towards strengthening of the systems of governance in the subjects of the Russian Federation and in municipalities that constitute the South Federative District (SFD). The CFP project is supported by the USAID.
The project consists of the three components:
1. Capacity building of the state and municipal mangers and specialists in the areas of public finance management and intergovernmental fiscal relations. The objectives of this component include: (i) training in theory of public finance management and intergovernmental fiscal relations on regional and local levels; (ii) training in practical work on the budget formulation stages such as drafting, considering and execution of the budget; (iii) improvement of skills in conducting budget analysis. The trainees learn best practices in budgeting from Russian experience and experience of other countries. The training course consists four blocks. These include:
- Intergovernmental fiscal relations,
- Public expenditures management,
- Income policy on regional and local levels,
- Debt policy on regional and local levels.
2. Technical assistance in the sphere of budgetary audit and monitoring of effectiveness of the budget outlays. The issue of introduction of budgetary audit is urgent for most of the regions of SFD as according to the new edition of the Budget Code those subjects of RF in income of which federal transfers comprise more than 50% must conclude with the Ministry of Finance an agreement on revitalization of public finance. Budget audit will help to reveal fundamental problems of public finance management in these regions and outline approaches to revitalization of public finance. The results of the audit will become a basis for drafting the agreement with the MoF. Results of the monitoring of the performance of budgetary institutions and of the execution of expenditure obligations can be used for improvements in public finance sphere as well as for meeting information needs of the apparatus of the Plenipotentiary representative of the President of RF in the SFD. These results shall become an information base for prognosis of revenue and expenditure parts of the budget, early determination of negatives phenomena in budgetary sphere, calculation of intergovernmental transfers to the subjects of RF and to municipalities, and calculation of the incomings of the budgetary establishments from business activities.
3. Program of revitalization of regional finance. This component supports development of the programs of revitalization of regional finance based on the results of the budget audit, and technical assistance in implementation of these programs in pilot regions.
Expected outputs of the project:
- Training course of four components, including: (i) intergovernmental fiscal relations, (ii) public finance management, (iii) income policy on regional and local levels, (iv) debt policy on regional and local levels.
- Objective tree for socio-economic development of the North Caucasus regions for 2006-2008 including system of indicators to monitor achievements,
- Action Plan for the District and for the regions,
- System and instruments such as statistics and data management and survey management to monitor efficiency of budget expenditures,
- Methodology of conducting budget audit to be adapted to the regional conditions,
- Program of revitalization of public finance to be developed for the pilot regions.
May-September 2006 events & acievements
Contacts:
Component 1: Antonina Kovalevskaya, Director for Development ankoval@fpcenter.org
Component 2: Valeriy Dalin, Team Leader, Budget Policy Division dalin@fpcenter.org
Component 3: Leonid Bogdanov, Deputy Director for Government Relations bogdanov@fpcenter.org
