Phnom Penh, September 23, 2015: NGO Forum on Cambodia (NGOF), through the National Budget Project of the Development Issues Program with the financial and technical support of UNICEF, conducted a one-day workshop on “Cambodian Budget” at Tonle Basac II restaurant to 51 participants (19 females). The majority of whom previously partook in a three-day training program on “Budget Analysis and Advocacy” held by NGOF on June 15-17th, 2015 at Sunway Hotel. These participants included NGOF staff, Budget Working Group (BWG) members, and representatives of the National Assembly (NA), Development Partners (DPs), NGOF’s member organizations, and students from various universities.
This workshop was principally aimed at further capacitating the participants with more practical and technical knowledge concerning budget analysis and advocacy in the Cambodian setting by concentrating on three significant tasks. One was to learn how to read a variety of budget-related documents such as budget law, law on public financial system 2008, audit law 2000, program budget execution guideline 2015, and other Prakas and Sub-Decrees on program and non-program budget formulation and implementation. The second task was to instruct the participants on how to perform a quick, practical analysis on budget allocation to priority sectors, predominantly education and health. Finally, the participants were guided on how to identify budget advocacy issues and strategies to better influence their both current and future advocacy work in the area of fiscal transparency and accountability with the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC), the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), and other relevant ministries and departments.
Following the workshop, the vast majority of the participants responded in the feedback form that they remarkably improved their technical and practical knowledge on how to read budget law and concerned documents as well as on how to quickly analyze budget although a few still seemed unclear about it. Some also mentioned that they were clear about budget advocacy issue and strategy identification, while others did not explicitly understand about it, thereby recommending NGOF to organize another workshop on it.
