Publication: Guinea Bissau - The Challenge of Restoring Budgetary Discipline : A Public Expenditure Review
Date
2004-02-05
ISSN
Published
2004-02-05
Author(s)
World Bank
Abstract
This Public Expenditure Review (PER)
presents a critical view of Guinea-Bissau's nascent
democratic structure, one that does not ensure a clear
separation of powers, which results in the need for the
judiciary to exercise its lacking independence. Restoring
budgetary discipline requires a series of actions in the
area of fiscal policy at the macroeconomic level, as well as
measures geared towards better prioritization, and
allocation of public resources. At the same time, the
government needs to resume efforts initiated before the
conflict of 1998/99, and take steps to reform the current
public finance management system. The renewed reform agenda
should focus on the budget cycle encompassing the legal
framework regulating it, the way the budget is formulated,
executed, controlled and accounted for, so that it can be
possible to improve efficiency, transparency, and
accountability in the use of public resources. The main
findings include institutional weaknesses and recurrent
macroeconomic imbalances; an economy heavily dependent on
exports, vulnerable to seasonal supply shocks; thus, to
circumvent a situation of growing financial difficulties,
and institutional fragility, the public finance management
system has become largely informal, with grave, undesired
consequences in terms of transparency and accountability.
The report focuses on institutional reforms, aimed at
improving the government's revenue mobilization
capacity, and strengthening budgetary discipline.
Recommendations for the social sectors suggest seeking
additional sources of public sector financing; strengthening
regulation of the private sector in Health; reviewing the
structure of the education budget; and, negotiating a more
flexible use of donor funding, integrating the Poverty
Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) process with the
sectors' planning efforts. To this end, the coverage of
the budget should be increased, coordination of information
improved, the budget preparation process strengthened,
enhancing expenditure control, through greater legislative
and civil society involvement in the budget process.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2004. Guinea Bissau - The Challenge of Restoring Budgetary Discipline : A Public Expenditure Review. Public expenditure review (PER);. © Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14682 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”