Publications

Notwithstanding methodological challenges of measuring the impact of the strategy, PEMPAL has had a visible impact at the member country level. As part of establishing a more systematic approach to the collection of success stories, member countries and COP resource teams worked on developing success stories during 2016.

Albania, Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova and the Russian Federation prepared success stories with detailed accounts of impact of PEMPAL on their PFM reforms. A summary of key points is provided in Table 1 with the full set provided in a separate booklet available at the program web site. Success stories were also provided in the COP submissions to the MTR of this current Strategy, which also included many examples of improved PFM practices that were fully or partially attributable to PEMPAL. During the MTR assessment, six countries from BCOP and 10 countries from TCOP provided concrete examples of impact of COP activities, while 12 countries from IACOP indicating significant impact from IACOP activities. 

During 2016, success stories were also collected on key public financial management themes being addressed by the COPs including use of information technologies in treasury operations, program and performance budgeting, fiscal and budget transparency, and internal audit knowledge products. A summary of key points is also provided in Table 2 and the full set of stories is accessible at the program website.

The factor that constrains the impact analysis is the lack of readily available PFM performance indicators for the member countries that are easily measurable, comprehensive and produced regularly. The coverage of available PFM performance assessments based on PEFA methodology across PEMPAL member countries is not comprehensive and the periodic nature of those assessments limits their use for PEMPAL purposes, given they are implemented at different times and some are out of date. It is also practically impossible to try and connect the impact of PEMPAL activities on the PFM performance of any country through linking it with PEFA scores. Not all countries participate in other international assessments on selected PFM dimensions such as the Open Budget Index, although such assessments have been promoted through PEMPAL.