ISLAMABAD: The government is seeking a $400 million loan from the World Bank to implement Public Finance Management Strategy (PMS) 2018-27 to bring improvement in procurement systems and accountability in service delivery for the health and education sectors.
A World Bank document says that the current Public Finance Management (PFM) limits the impact of ongoing health and education operations through inefficient and ineffective management of funds, lack of transparency which can undermine accountability, and coordination challenges between federal and provincial governments.
The proposed programme will address these challenges through transformative measures like, enactment of a robust PFM law, which will lead to empowerment of front-line service delivery managers by decentralisation of payment processing and availability of real-time budget execution reports for timely decision-making.
Furthermore, greater transparency and accountability will be achieved through establishment of e-procurement; audit trails of procurements; tracking of expenditure to service delivery level; allowing for direct beneficiary monitoring of public expenditure through social audit to improve delivery of services; auditing of performance information in financial statements.
