On 6 and 7 September 2018, in the framework of the project “Strengthening the Capacities for Strategic Planning and Policy Development – Phase 2 (SPPD 2)”, funded by the Public Administration Reform Fund, an exchange of experience visit was organized to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Regional Development and EU funds of the Republic of Croatia.
The topics of the visit were a programme budgeting, and linking the planning process with the budgeting process. The primary target group of the visit are senior managers from institutions responsible for coordination in strategic planning and policy development and senior managers in budget planning activities from the ministries of finance (BiH, the FBiH, the RS) and the Directorate of Finance of the Brčko District.
During the visit, a special attention was devoted to strategic planning and policy development and related planning instruments (including hierarchy and interaction between planning documents) at the level of the Government and in the institutions – a unique cycle – linking with the budget – (legal basis and practically). Then issues related to programme classification – determination and allocation of costs of activities / projects within the programme – (regulatory and practical), topics related to financial and programme monitoring, reporting and evaluation – (regulatory and practical). Also, the institutional framework and roles of different actors (internal (within the institution), horizontal cooperation (between institutions of the same level of government) and vertical coordination (between different levels of government), cooperation with stakeholders) were presented in detail in the framework of planning, monitoring, reporting and evaluation.
The experience of Croatia is relevant to BiH, since Croatia applies programme budgeting, and that at the end of 2017, the Law on the System of Strategic Planning and Development Management of the Republic of Croatia was adopted, whose certain provisions will come into force during the medium term period 2018 – 2020. The Law systematically regulates strategic planning and management of public policies, i.e. preparation, production, implementation, performance monitoring and evaluation.
The participants of this visit were representatives of the Ministry of Finance of BiH, the Directorate for Economic Planning, the Cabinet of the Government of the Republic of Srpska, the Federal Ministry of Finance, the Finance Directorate of the Brčko District of BiH, the Ministry of Finance of the RS and the Secretariat General of the Government of the FBiH.