The elaboration of the 5-year financial plan and 3-year financial-budgetary plan stems from practical demands to overcome the limitations of the current annual state budget estimation and to enhance the effectiveness of public financial management in line with international practice. This helps to ensure that the main budgetary management objectives are well implemented, which are fiscal discipline, allocation efficiency and operational efficiency; to improve the quality and practicality of the medium-term public investment plan; to enhance the capacity of the central and provincial governments in strategic planning and the timely implementation of these plans and therefore to make sure that the budget allocations reflect the spending priorities of the government and that public goods and services are delivered cost-effectively and in general to adapt to good international practice.

After the approval of the pertinent regulations, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) organises three training workshops on 5-year financial planning and 3-year financial-budgetary planning. The workshops will be organized on the 11th July in Hanoi with representatives from the central level of government; on the 12th July in Hanoi with representatives from 31 Northern provinces and on the 14th July in HCMC with representatives from 32 Southern provinces.

In line with the revised State Budget Law of 2015, with the introduction of medium-term financial planning in Vietnam, for the first time that the Government has decided to embed this essential public financial management tool in a sound legal framework to assure its smooth implementation aiming to translate macro-fiscal objectives and constraints into broad budget aggregates and detailed expenditure plans, guided by strategic expenditure priorities. This is a remarkable milestone for Vietnam in modernizing its public finance management system and to align it with international good-practice. The workshops aim at disseminating the new regulations on medium-term financial planning and instructing participants to apply the new regulations on their financial-budgetary planning for the period of 2018-2020.

In this regard, the Ministry of Finance is supported by the European Union’s (EU) Public Finance Modernization Project (EU-PFMO), which aims to support the improvement of public financial management (PFM) in Vietnam. Dr. Krakowski – Chief Technical Advisor of the Macroeconomic Reforms/Green Growth Programme – stressed that “the key determinants of success for the implementation of medium-term financial planning in Vietnam will be the establishment of comprehensive macroeconomic analysis and revenue forecasting, sound debt management, reasonable linkages between the 5-year and the 3-year plans as well as the integration of the multi-annual investment planning on the central and provincial level of government”.

For more information, please contact Mrs Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, Programme Officer, EU-PFMO Project. Tel: +84 (0) 24 36 33 02 14 or Email: ha.nguyen3@giz.de.