IRM Municipality of Ouagadougou – Support Project to Improve Public Finance Management in the Municipality of Ouagadougou

Supporting the implementation of the PEFA-2019 Action Plan to improve public finance management in the municipality

Burkina Faso has opted for decentralisation as the main mode of local governance and development. The practical application of this decision requires substantial support from the State and its partners for the development of regional and local authorities to ensure they have sufficient human, material, technical and financial resources to implement their mandates.

However, due to the low level of allocations and tax and non-tax revenues, the regional and local authorities generally lack resources to address their needs.

It is in this context that an initial assessment of the public finance management system (PEFA) of the Municipality of Ouagadougou was conducted in 2010, with World Bank financing. A second assessment financed by AFD and implemented by Expertise France was conducted in 2019. The IRM – Municipality of Ouagadougou project aims to assist with the implementation of the action plan established following this second PEFA assessment.

Objectives of the Internal Resource Mobilisation – Municipality of Ouagadougou project

The IRM – Municipality of Ouagadougou project is based on two main objectives.

Objective 1: Increase the internal and external resources of the Municipality of Ouagadougou in order to improve and develop investments in local public services

Objective 2: Optimise the Municipality’s resources, improve its budgetary and accounting management, increase awareness of the performance of its services and strengthen the internal and external control mechanisms

At project completion, a PEFA self-assessment will measure the improvement in the quality of local finance management. The expected impacts of the project include: an increase in the Municipality’s tax and non-tax resources, an improvement in the performance of municipal services responsible for local public finance management and greater tax compliance and social cohesion between the citizens of Ouagadougou and the Municipality.

Our operational strategy

The implementation of the project’s activities will be entrusted to a project team based in the offices of the Municipality of Ouagadougou. This team will be composed of a resident expert in local public finance and a project coordinator, as well as a panel of short term and ad hoc technical experts, identified and recruited by Expertise France in line with the clearly identified needs.

A three-month start-up phase will allow the project team to meet the Municipality’s officers and fine-tune the timetable of the activities and the profiles of the experts sought to carry out these activities.

The activities of the four components will be carried out during the implementation phase:

1) Help the Municipality of Ouagadougou increase its capacity to mobilise internal resources and raise the awareness of citizens and taxpayers to tax compliance

2) Strengthen the internal and external control of the Municipality’s public finance management

3) Improve the budgetary and accounting quality of the Municipality

4) Strengthen the performance of the Municipality’s services for public finance management

The one-month closing phase will consolidate the information required for the PEFA self-assessment. This phase will also be an opportunity for all the project stakeholders to learn about the progress achieved by the Municipality of Ouagadougou in public finance management.