Practitioner’s Guide to Using Country Systems – For Your Comments: PRELIMINARY DRAFT

In the 2005 Paris Declaration, partner countries committed to strengthening their national systems and donors to using them to the maximum extent possible as part of the global efforts to make aid more effective. Both partners and donors agreed to accelerate and deepen these commitments during the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held in Accra in 2008. In order to facilitate the implementation of these commitments, the Task Force on Public Financial Management was tasked with producing guidance for donors on using country PFM systems.

Defining where, how and to what extent donors use partner country PFM systems in donor-financed programs represents an important challenge for the donor and its dialogue with partner countries. The practitioner’s guide, therefore, proposes a high-level framework for guiding decisions on the use of country PFM systems. In particular, the main aim of the Practitioner’s Guide is to: (i) propose a framework for decisions around the use of country public financial management (PFM) systems in manners that strengthen the country’s sustainable development and (ii) report on the different ways and approaches in which donor organizations (bilateral and multilateral agencies) determine and use country PFM systems for donor-financed programs. In doing so, the guide beings to identify good practices in relation to the various elements or subcomponents of an integrated PFM system (budget, treasury, accounting, financial reporting, internal and external audit), representing varied country environments (fragile states, low income countries, and middle income countries) and aid modalities [general budget support (GBS), sector budget support (SBS), and project support (PS)].

The full report is available here.

This is a preliminary draft and comments are welcome.