By: Igihe.com Reporter
Rwanda’s permanent secretary in East African Community Robert Ssali has said Rwanda still faces the challenge of capacity building in its national budgeting process.
Ssali told igihe.com shortly after officially opening the two day 7th Annual Seminar of the Collaborative Africa Budget Reform Initiative (CABRI) taking place at Serena Hotel.
“Like any other country in Africa, they almost share challenges in their national budget process, challenges persist around the implementation of budget reforms and execution,” Ssali said.
According to the press release, African public financial management (PFM) systems generally suffer from an implementation deficit laws and processes may be in place but seldom affect actual behavior.
He, however, says Rwanda has done quite a lot in 17 years after the 1994 genocide to improve in almost every sector including using well foreign aid that have been directed to national budget.
“Rwanda has really picked up quickly, it has dealt with public finance management systems very seriously instilling discipline in all operators on accountability. To me, discipline of fiscal related matters is the key,” he said adding that Rwanda is the least corrupt country in this region which makes her do well in budget reforms.
Ssali says that seminar was critical to African countries since most of them have their national budgets that are not fully supported by their own resources.
For him the important thing is not having a national budget in place but how to effectively make the budget implemented and serve the needs of the citizens.
The theme of the seminar is “Making Budgets Work – The Implementation Challenge” and emerging information indicate that making budgets work is critical for efficient and effective service delivery, economic growth and socio-economic development.
The 7th CABRI annual Seminar will also explore the reasons and identify possible solutions for the implementation deficit.
The focus will be on three implementation challenges in particular, how to create organisational structures that are most conducive to improved pubic financial management, how to enforce legal frameworks and how to improve fiscal decentralisation to improve local budgeting and service delivery.
Senior budget officials from across Africa met to share knowledge on common challenges of budget implementation on the continent.
Collaborative Africa Budget Reform Initiative (CABRI) is a professional network of senior budget officials of African Ministries of Finance and/or Planning.
Rwanda is one of the CABRI founding members and also sits on the Management Committee.
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