Phnom Penh, October 8, 2015: The NGO Forum on Cambodia (NGOF), with financial support from Save the Children, jointly conducted a launching workshop on “Budget Reform and Community Participation in Primary Education in Cambodia”, which was held at Tonle Bassac Restaurant II. Forty eight participants (23 females) from local and international NGOs, youths, and Development Partners attended in the workshop. In addition, there were also around 16 participants from different media who joined to get information in this workshop.
The main objectives of the launching workshop were to present the findings of the research on budget reform and community participation in primary education and to disseminate the research report to the participants for their individual purposes.
In his remark, Dr. Tek Vannara, Executive Director of NGO Forum, highlighted some challenges of the implementation of the program-based budgeting and community participation at the sub-national levels and some general recommendations according to the study in addition to what the government did in dealing with such problems. He also motivated all participants to carefully pay attention to the elaboration of the findings for the sake of future advocacy, and research, and their knowledge and know-how in the budget sector.
During the event, Mr. Pak Kimchoeun, a consultant to the research study, conducted the presentation of the research report by informing the participant about the objectives, methodology, findings, and recommendations of the research study. After the presentation, many NGOs raised their questions about the efficient performance of the implementation of program budgeting, while other NGOs were more interested in the literate review, methodology, and scope of the study.
The study covered the processes of the implementation of the program budgeting at the sub-national level and did not study the efficiency of the budget against the desired results. Therefore, the recommendations for the study were made for the sub-national level. Additionally, the scope of the study focused on two provinces (i.e. Battambang and Kratie Provinces, two districts and four communes, and that program budgeting for the personnel budget was not only a factor to study, but there were many other factors including deployment of the teachers, who were the key of budget expenditure, etc. Governance of budget especially school budget and roles of School Support Committee (SSC) was also a key to promoting ownership of the Sub-National Administrations (SNAs) and SSC to ensure efficiency of the budget expenditure.
Taking the opportunity, the representative of Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS) expressed his impression and supports of all comments related to the further study of performance efficiency of the implementation of Program-Based Budgeting (PB) for the purpose of the evidence-based research for informing the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) about the issues of PB implementation during the negotiation of budget.
“All comments and inputs provided by all participants will be considered for future improvement and strategic advocacy,” said Ms. Kim Nay, Development Program Manager of NGOF.
The Report in Khmer version will be available in late November on website and printing versions.
Budget Reform and Community Participation in Primary Education in Cambodia can be downloaded here:
English: http://bit.ly/1Zegvaa
