By Chernor Alimamy Kamara
The Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) Assessment’s 2021 final report indicates that development partners have not been supportive of Gender Response Public Financial Management.
The purpose of the gender-responsive Public Financial Management (PFM) assessment was to gather information on the budgeting and reporting systems of the Government of Sierra Leone to ascertain the extent to which PFM responds to the needs of gender (male and female) and other marginalized groups such as people with physical or mental disabilities.
The assessment concluded that gender responsiveness was yet to be mainstreamed into the planning, budget formulation, preparation and execution systems of the Government of Sierra Leone even though the Medium-Term National Development Plan 2019-2023 cluster 5 identifies gender, children, and disability as a key government policy goal.
The assessment shows that the government has signed into law a number of gender-responsive bills, developed and approved a number of policy documents and strategies on gender. Poor performance was also recorded on all nine Gender Response Public Financial Management (GRPFM) with a score of ‘D’.
The assessment noted that the score of ‘D’ indicates that government did not analyze proposed changes in expenditure and revenue policies to ascertain gender impacts in the main PEFA report which assessed the fiscal impact of policy proposals. It said with regards to public investment management, the government neither analyses the gender responsiveness of public investment proposals nor makes an economic analysis of investment proposals with a gender perspective.
The assessment pointed out that the budget circular issued to budget institutions did not provide any specific information on gender-related issues that would allow expenditure proposals based on gender, even though general performance information on service delivery was available. There was no gender-responsive budget proposal documentation and that expenditure tracking was obviously impossible and non-existent.
The Head of Development Cooperation of the European Union to Sierra Leone, Gerald Hatler during the launch noted that sound PFM systems are critical for the efficient mobilization and use of scarce public resources and constitute a key factor for implementing the national development policies and for improving public service delivery. He said besides, transparency and accountability of PFM systems is an important pillar of the ‘social pact’ between the authorities and society.
He added that in a well-functioning democracy, it is critical that economic actors and citizens trust the authorities when they are collecting revenue, instructing expenditures, or managing public assets.
‘’The current context of tight fiscal space and tensions in the international markets can only exacerbate the need for efficient and accountable PFM systems,’’ he said.
He said the PEFA framework provides an internationally recognized and evidence-based methodology for assessing PFM systems at the central government level. He further said that the PEFA 2021 assessment which report was presented and discussed during the workshop was for the first time carried out by the staff of the Ministry of Finance together with international experts.
‘’In other words, PEFA 2021 provides an objective, up-to-date and comprehensive assessment of the PFM system in Sierra Leone, including the gender-responsive dimension,’’ he said.
Hatler concluded that significant challenges remain in other critical areas such as budget execution, the magnitude of extra-budgetary funds, public investment management, or external scrutiny and audit. He said there is still room for improvement in budget reliability, fiscal discipline, and strategic allocation of resources.
The Government of Sierra Leone recognizes the importance of mainstream gender in the PFM framework for purpose of ensuring gender equality. It is on this background that it has passed into law a number of legislations and developed policies and strategies for gender.
Copyright © 2022 Politico Online (15/07/22)
