By Nick Mann | 23 October 2012
Liberia’s efforts to improve its public finance management and reduce corruption moved up a step yesterday with the launch of a $28.5m project backed by the World Bank and development agencies.
The Integrated Public Financial Management Reform Project will work towards improving Liberia’s budget coverage, fiscal policy management, financial control and oversight of the government’s finances.
It will also cover the country’s public finance management legal framework; the systems used to plan budgets and their coverage and credibility; revenue mobilisation and administration; and project management and governance.
Inguna Dobraja, World Bank country manager for Liberia, said: ‘This project supports the implementation of the Government of Liberia’s Public Financial Management Reform Strategy, approved in July 2011, and seeks to widen and strengthen the public financial management system of the Liberian government.’
The project will pursue ‘concrete improvements’ to ‘enable Liberia to gradually develop its own institutional, organisational, and human resource capacities in the next three to four years consistent with the Bank’s broader agenda in improving governance’.
Liberia’s finance minister Amara Konneh added: ‘Our greatest fiscal challenge lies in focusing on the expenditure of cash inflows from domestic revenue and from donors on established priorities. The better we can manage our public finances, the better we can deliver on our poverty reduction and job creation agenda.’
Funding for the project is coming from the World Bank ($5m), the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency ($15.1m), the US Agency for International Development ($3.85m) and the African Development Bank ($4.6m). Sida and USAID’s support is being channelled through a World Bank-administered multi-donor trust fund.
