It happened to be a sunny morning in Kathmandu when all the participants from three countries — Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh greeted and exchanged possible doable ideas on inclusion of citizens into the budget making process ahead of the regional workshop.
Similar feelings were also expressed at the start of the workshop by the World Bank Institute, Washington, ANSA-SAR, Bangladesh (A regional network on Social Accountability in South Asia) and PRAN, Nepal to find commonalities and entry points for effective participation of citizens into the public financial management cycle.
The workshop was unique as it brought together representatives of different tiers of governments and civil society organisations on a common platform.
Public financial management process is complex and tedious to understand requiring special skills to de-codify and de-mystify the whole process. It comprises of four stages of budget formulation, enactment, execution and monitoring.
The formulation and planning stage is mostly performed by the executive class of the country and provided the legislature with estimates of the revenues and expenditures.
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