| Grant Profile: |
| Project Title: |
Rapid Impact Public Financial Management (PFM) Project for Southern Sudan |
| PCF/LICUS/SPF: |
LICUS |
Status: |
Open |
| File Number: |
85
| Region: |
AFR |
| Sector: |
Finance |
Country: |
Sudan |
| FY approved: |
2009 |
Grant Theme : |
Economic management |
| Keyword(s): |
Public expenditure, financial management and procurement |
Approved Amount: |
$3,500,000.00 |
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Grant Recipient:
Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MoFEP), Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) |
Grant Purpose:
The overall purpose of this grant is to respond to the request of the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) to provide urgently needed targeted interventions to strengthen the public financial management (PFM) system of the government. This would be done through the provision of the much needed technical assistance in selected PFM areas, strengthening the existing human resource (HR) capacity through training of existing PFM staff, funding the recruitment of fresh graduates into a training cum civil service work program, and providing limited support in revenue management through a twinning arrangement between a well functioning national revenue authority in the region and the revenue department of a GoSS State Government.
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Grant Activities:
The proposal has three components as set out below. These components will provide a package of technical assistance and institutional capacity support over 24months. The grant will help to build basic capacity to effectively manage, absorb and use expected inflows of development assistance and government’s own resources, and build the capacity to develop policy and formulate and implement programs .
Component 1: Technical Advisors (TA)
The proposal is to provide three senior level and eight middle level Advisors to GoSS and to the State level governments in Southern Sudan:
1) A Senior PFM Advisor
2) Three Accounts Specialists
3) Procurement Advisor
4) Internal Audit (IA) Advisor
The component will advise Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) on the placement of new and newly trained staff, so as to maximize their value. The component will also ensure they provide such staff with on-the-job training.
Component 2: Training of existing and new MoFEP staff
This component builds upon the Bank experience with the Ministry of Finance in Liberia and other post conflict countries where existing staff undergo short-term refresher courses while fresh graduates who are selected on the basis of an open competitive exam are being trained and inducted into the government service. This approach builds on the widespread understanding in GoSS on the need to provide a qualitatively and cognitive skill base for handling PFM issues in MoFEP and line ministries, while also improving the skills of existing staff.
Training would be provided at the Government Accountancy Training College (GATC). MoFEP has a plan to induct fresh graduates who are competitively selected. MoFEP wishes to train 40 individuals through an intensive program in formal accountancy technician training that is internationally recognized, while they work at MoFEP. Depending on the success of the recruitment and selection process the number is expected to increase to 60 graduates to ensure that MOFEP would have access to adequate and sufficiently trained staff to be deployed to line ministries and relevant locations. These newly inducted graduates will be put through an internationally recognized professional accountancy training program (referred to above). On completion of their training these young graduates would be offered permanent employment within the directorates of MoFEP, line ministries, commissions and agencies of GoSS.
PFM training would also be extended to about 40 current staff in MoFEP and line ministries starting with directors and below, to enhance their performance on their duties. During the training, the provider will identify five staff to be trained as trainers (i.e. a training of trainer or TOT) who will then continue with training of the remaining current staff of the ministry.
Component 3: Support to the MoFEP Directorate of Taxation & the Revenue Authority of Central Equatoria State (CES):
The proposal envisages a twining arrangement with a leading Revenue Authority in East Africa, so that regional experts can provide ongoing support, and extensive in-house training facilities in their parent authority can be used for training MoFEP & CES officials. The component is also intended as a pilot to see how this could be replicated in other States. The work program for this component will be determined upon an initial needs assessment that is expected to take place shortly followed by strategic interventions for institutional reform and quick wins within a 6-12 month time-frame. This near term intervention is expected to be followed on with a bigger intervention that would provide the funding for longer-term reforms.
Depending upon the experience with CES, this component could also be extended to the MoFEP Directorate of Taxation.
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