Croatia
Training course focusing on the Dutch budgeting process
Training visit of 6 Croatian Ministry of Finance economists
  
Program Name: Economic Forecasting and Budget Development Processes in Developed Countries
Program Dates: June 27-July 3, 2004 (including travel days); 1 week
World Learning Third Country Training/ PTP, Sponsored by USAID
Within the framework of the Participate Training Program sponsored
by USAID a training visit of eight senior officials of the Ministry of
Finance of Croatia in the period of June 27-July 3, 2004 will be
organized by Micromacro Consultants (MMC) in The Hague. The main
objectives of this visit are to give the Ministry of Finance staff a
better understanding of modern budget development processes that will
enhance the transparency and accountability of government financial
management, and assist aggregate fiscal discipline over government
finances, thereby helping to alleviate investor concerns about deficit
spending, prioritization of government resource allocation, management
of arrears, and overall fiscal and economic stability. Furthermore they
want some training in macroeconomic modeling and forecasting
techniques.
The Croatian participants summarized their main interests and
out of these stated objectives MMC distillated the following 7 subjects
and steps in the process that will be paid attention:
1. Macro economic variables
2. Government revenues
3. Government expenditures
4. Financing and debt
5. Policy simulations
6. Budget forecast
7. Evaluation
In order to address these main training objectives MMC will organize a
training course involving 11 workshops (plus 4 one hour workshops) by
ten specialized experts that work for different Dutch institutions
involved in the budget process (Ministry of Finance, CPB Netherlands
Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, Central Bureau of Statistics,
Research Institutes). These experts are part of the network of
short-term consultants which work for a few hours up till a few months
a year for MMC next to their regular job. This means that all of these
experts already have experience in giving workshops for officials from
the ministries of Finance and Economic Affairs of a variety of
different countries (e.g. Macedonia, Poland, Indonesia, Kenya,
Ethiopia, Surinam, Curaçao). In these workshops the seven subjects will
be central to the explanation of the Dutch budget preparation process
by the different experts.
LOCATION
The workshops will all be held at the same location at the headquartes
of MMC in The Hague. In this way we are able to organize workshops with
many experts from different Dutch institutions for the participants
without spending a large amount of time and money on transportation
from building to building. In our approach the relevant knowledge of
the different institutions is brought to the participants instead of
bringing the participants to the different buildings of the different
institutions.
This picture shows the conference room of MMC while it was used during this visit.
If the wheather allowed the lunches were held at the beach restaurant BOONOONOONOOS.
Downloads:
- Proceedings Paper: download (2 mb)
- Introduction of the Dutch budgetting system (PDF): open (1,6 mb)
As an additional service to the visiting economists of the Croatian Ministry of Finance MMC
created a testversion macroabc-model for a country very similar to Croatia named Aitaorc. The
construction of this model was not a part of the official training visit.
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