Publication: National Planning Commission Arrangements
Loading...
Published
2009-05
ISSN
Date
2012-08-13
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Based on a review of relevant World Bank materials and outside sources, this note focuses on two questions of critical importance in discussions surrounding the establishment of a planning commission. These are: 1) what planning commission arrangements seem to be effective? 2) What should the role of a planning commission be in a quasi-federal system? It should be recognized that a planning commission is only one possible institutional device to deal with coordination issues within and across levels of government. The determination of the most appropriate mechanism for dealing with each type of coordination issue or failure requires careful understanding of the specific driving factors.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Watkins, Joanna. 2009. National Planning Commission Arrangements. Global Expert Team (GET) Brief. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/10559 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Socialist Republic of Vietnam - Results-Based National Urban Development Program in the Northern Mountains Region : Fiduciary System Assessment(Washington, DC, 2014-04-28)The proposed Results-Based National Urban Development Program in the Northern Mountains Region (RBNUDP-NM or the Program ) will assist the Government of Vietnam in developing the implementation framework for its national urban program. It will do this by piloting a performance-based transfer system that will provide participating cities with a combination of much needed resources along with a clarification of implementation responsibilities, a results-based orientation, improved planning and a strengthening of oversight and accountability through audits and verification activities. The Program Development Objective is to strengthen the capacity of participating Northern Mountains cities to plan, implement and sustain urban infrastructure. The World Bank s Program-for-Results lending instrument is to be used for this operation. The Program targets the following seven cities Dien Bien Phu, Bac Kan, Cao Bang, Thai Nguyen, Hoa Binh, Tuyen Quang and Yen Bai.Publication Working with the Grain for Reforming the Public Service : A Live Example from Sierra Leone(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-07)Development practitioners still lack a critical mass of empirical evidence which can help identify the set of interventions that are more likely to work, and inform the design and implementation of feasible reforms. This paper contributes to fill this gap by looking at the case of the 'Sierra Leone Pay and Performance Project', a World Bank-supported initiative to reform the civil service. It analyzes the functional problems characterizing the civil service and discusses what factors account for the observed dysfunctions. The central argument is that the current dysfunctions might be difficult to reverse as they define a sub-optimal equilibrium which serves political purposes (dysfunctions by design). However, politics is not all that matters. This equilibrium is further reinforced by systemic dysfunctions that may not be the consequence of any strategic design or the outcome of elite preferences (dysfunctions by default). This is where there is scope for change, even in the short run. The authors conclude that the chances of successful civil service reforms are likely to be maximized if reform initiatives support modest and incremental changes that work with the grain of existing incentives and are consistent with government preferences. The Sierra Leone Pay and Performance Project aims to do so by adopting a limited and targeted focus on pay reform, performance management and recruitment and staffing. In addition, the use of the results-based lending instrument is expected to help mitigate the current dysfunctions by aligning the incentives of the various players and, in this way, create the conditions for greater coordination across government agencies. Although the suggested approach is not without risks, recent dynamics suggest that the chances of success are greater today than in the past.Publication Common Practices in Setting Expenditure Ceilings within National Budgets(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01)Developing a national budget has always entailed a complex set of negotiations between national Government priorities, line ministry priorities, and a national funding envelope. This note explains how to introduce a medium term horizon into a government’s budgeting process, including the key steps involved. It provides guidance on setting aggregate and line ministry ceilings, reviewing experiences from countries with extensive experience of ceilings (for example, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, South Korea, Indonesia, Brazil, Australia, and Canada, among others), as well as those that have more recently adopted them. There is no one right way to set expenditure ceilings. Countries tailor expenditure ceilings to meet their specific needs, budget challenges, and capacity constraints. This note presents an iterative approach - starting from annual ceilings and gradually moving toward a medium-term expenditure framework - allowing for procedural, institutional, and organizational learning and adaptation along the way.Publication Improving the Quality of Public Expenditure in the Dominican Republic(Washington, DC, 2012)This book addresses the achievements, challenges, and opportunities to improve the quality of public spending. Steps to make such changes have come through monitoring and evaluation approaches that can be replicated or expanded; sectoral efforts to improve the performance of priority programs; Congress's use of information on the results of public spending; the implementation of performance budgeting at subnational levels; and the harmonization of accounting between the three levels of the federal government. All these aspects are key elements of comprehensive reform. Currently, as the book states, accountability focuses on achieving results rather than on centering attention on mere compliance with rules and procedures. In this context, based on a new legal framework, the government of Mexico has decisively promoted results-based management and budgeting. The Performance Evaluation System (SED) was finally established in 2008 with the institution of the principles, concepts, methodologies, guidelines, procedures, and systems that support its operation. Its adoption as a common practice in the Federal Public Administration (APF) process will require a gradual, progressive, systematic learning and continuous improvement that should allow performance evaluation to take root in the APF. This calls for consolidating the Results-Based Budgeting (RBB)-SED in all agencies, expanding its use and improving the quality of the information that feeds it. However, not just the APF benefit will from the implementation of the RBB-SED. As the publication suggests, the approach to an expenditure budget based on performance information offers Congress great opportunities to enhance its regulatory and supervisory functions. The improvement in the quality of Matrices de Indicadores para Resultados (MIRs), program evaluations, and their integration into the budgetary programming cycle also contributes to this purpose.Publication Republic of South Sudan : Country Integrated Fiduciary Assessment Southern Sudan, Volume 1. Main Report(Washington, DC, 2012-06)The purpose of this Country Integrated Fiduciary Assessment (CIFA) is: (i) to assess the quality of public finance management and procurement systems in South Sudan; and (ii) to then determine the extent of fiduciary risk posed to domestic and external tax payers by the government's use of their funds through these systems. South Sudan has great potential for further increases in living standards, but achieving them will require large improvements in public services, both in access and in quality. In turn, Public Finance Management (PFM) and procurement systems need to be strengthened in order to improve public services; this will require linking spending more tightly to policy objectives and strengthening the operational efficiency of expenditures. In sum, strengthened PFM and procurement systems are not an end in themselves but, rather, the necessary means to achieving the ultimate objective: improved service delivery in South Sudan. This CIFA will be used by the Government of the Republic of South Sudan (GRSS) and by the country state governments to inform their design or reforms of PFM and procurement systems and, in the case of development partners, to inform their design or revision of technical and financial assistance programs and projects in support of the reforms.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Mapping Returns of Private Equity Investments in Emerging Markets(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-10)This paper fills a gap in research on private equity investments in emerging markets and developing economies. It provides descriptive evidence and examines the distribution of returns across sectors such as finance, technology, and resource-intensive industries like mining, where significant variation exists. Using data from the International Finance Corporation, the analysis finds that return distributions exhibit "fat tails", with a notable presence of investments yielding extremely high returns alongside others generating little or no return, highlighting the importance of diversification. The analysis reveals that firm-specific factors account for the largest share of return variability, with country and sector factors playing a smaller role. Gross domestic product growth and real exchange depreciation are significantly related to returns, with median elasticities of 0.35 and -0.67, respectively.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication World Development Report 1990(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)This report is the thirteenth in the annual series addressing major development issues. This report is about the poor. It is thus about the fundamental issue in economic development : the eradication of poverty from the world. The report defines poverty in broad terms, to include literacy, nutrition, and health, as well as income. The evidence suggests that rapid and politically sustainable progress on poverty has been achieved by pursuing a strategy with two equally important elements. The first is to promote the efficient use of the poor's most abundant asset : labor. It calls for policies that harness market incentives, social and political institutions, infrastructure and technology. The second element is the provision of basic social services to the poor (e.g. primary health care, family planning, nutrition, and primary education). The report concludes that eliminating poverty altogether is not a realistic goal for the 1990s, but that reducing it greatly is entirely possible. Using plausible assumptions about the global economic environment, and with some policy improvements, the report projects a fall of one third in the number of people in poverty by the year 2000.Publication Regional Poverty and Inequality Update: Latin America and the Caribbean, October 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-23)This brief summarizes recent facts related to poverty and inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) using the latest wave of harmonized household surveys from the Socio-Economic Database for LAC (SEDLAC). This brief was produced by the Poverty Global Practice in the LAC Region of the World Bank.Publication Inflation in Emerging and Developing Economies(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019)Emerging market and developing economies, like advanced economies, have experienced a remarkable decline in inflation over the past half-century. Yet, research into this development has focused almost exclusively on advanced economies. This book fills that gap, providing the first comprehensive and systematic analysis of inflation in emerging market and developing economies. It examines how inflation has evolved and become synchronized among economies; what drives inflation globally and domestically; where inflation expectations have become better-anchored; and how exchange rate fluctuations can pass through to inflation. To reach its conclusions, the book employs cutting edge empirical approaches. It also offers a rich data set of multiple measures of inflation for a virtually global sample of countries over a half-century to spur further research into this important topic.