Country: Worldwide
Period: 2003-2010
Client: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands
Staff involved: Albert de Groot, Laura Thissen, Ferry Philipsen, Arthur ten Have, Piet Lanser, Martin van der Linde

The Public Finance Management Support Programme is a seven-year support/advice/training programme to enhance capacity with respect to Public Finance Management (PFM) and related thematic issues such as fiscal space, debt management, fiscal decentralisation, and accountability and corruption at 25 Royal Netherlands Embassies (RNEs) in partner countries and at Headquarters in the Hague.  Staff of the RNEs and other stakeholders (representatives of other donors, government officials from the Ministry of Finance and line ministries) are supported with coaching and training by an expert for a period of three years. The consultant provides technical support to embassy staff on fiscal space and scaling up of aid, fiscal decentralisation, debt relief, budget support modalities (general and sectoral), SWAPs, donor co-ordination, PRSPs and their costing, and accountability and corruption. PFM tools such as Medium Term Expenditure Frameworks (MTEF), Public Expenditure Reviews (PER) and Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) are also discussed with country examples. The project focuses on improving the knowledge of the target group on local PFM issues, in terms of local budget processes and procedures as well as in contents (e.g. structure, sustainability, etc.) of the public budget. 

Specifically, the activities undertaken include:

1. coaching and on-the-job-training of embassy staff in the field of PFM;
2. provision of modular training in PFM, complementary and supportive to the on-the-job-training;
3. provision of awareness training to officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who will take up a new posting; 
4. internal dissemination of PFM lessons derived from the PFM Support Programme in the form of mission flyers, yearly thematic workshops for participating experts and officials of the client’s headquarters to exchange views and experiences, e-newsletters, lunch presentations in the client’s headquarters by the participating experts on topics in the field of budget management processes and the role of the Netherlands embassies; and articles in international periodicals.