One week seminar on “Interbudgetary relations: foreign and Uzbekistan experience” was held during March 28-April 1, 2011 for the Ministry of Finance specialists and the trainers of the Training Center under the Ministry of Finance. The seminar was co-hosted by the UNDP’s “Budget System Reform in Uzbekistan” Project and Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency (TIKA) in partnership with the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Uzbekistan. The main goal of the seminar is to enhance the capacity of the Ministry of Finance specialists and the trainers of the Training Centre under the Ministry of Finance through sharing international experience in the field of interbudgetary relations and necessary knowledge and skills for further implementation of the reforms in public finance.
The Government of Uzbekistan has initiated public finance reforms to enhance the effectiveness and transparency of the public finance expenditures. To advance with the implementation of the initiative, the Ministry of Finance has adopted a Reform Strategy of Public Finance Management for the period of 2007-2018. In order to assist the Government of Uzbekistan in implementing the strategy the United Nations Development Programme in Uzbekistan within the framework of its “Budget System Reform in Uzbekistan” Project implements a number of initiatives such as supporting the introduction of mid-term budgeting strategy and performance based budgeting, as well as institutional strengthening of human resource capacity of the Ministry of Finance.
In this regard, it is important to improve the system of training, re-training and enhancement of qualification of the Ministry of Finance specialists. The Project is continuing to provide assistance in enhancing the potential and qualification of trainers of the Training Center. Particularly, a set of measures on development of modern and quality curricula, formation of necessary trainer potential within the Training Center are currently being implemented. This seminar was one of the outputs of abovementioned work and is conducted by international and national experts, having both practical experience and strong academic knowledge in the field.
3 International experts and a national expert trained the participants on the seminar. Mr. Umit Ozlale is a Director of the Department at the Institute of Economic Research of Turkey (TEPAV), Mr. ZekiBalta is a Director of the State Accounting Department at the Ministry of Finance of Turkey and Mr. GlebPokatovich, the expert from Russia is a Head of the Public Programs and Projects Department at the Analytical Center under the Government of the Russian Federation. The National Expert is Mr. AlijonErgashev – Deputy Head of division of the State Budget Department at the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Uzbekistan.
During the seminar, the discussions were related to the Budget Principles and Classifications; Local Governments and Local Budgeting; Interbudgetary Transfers: rationale, objectives, models and practices, as well as methodology and the practical aspects of Interbudgetary Relations in Uzbekistan. The knowledge obtained during the seminar will be used in the process of conducting lectures and seminars by trainers of the Training Center for training and re-training the Ministry of Finance specialists. At the end of the event the participants who successfully finished the seminar were awarded with Certificates.
Moreover to promote the effectiveness of further reforms in the Public Finance area it is quite important to train the growing generation as well. In this regard, within the “Budget System Reform in Uzbekistan” Project one day master-classes were conducted on March 29 at Tashkent Financial Institute. Taking into account that the Tashkent Financial Institute is a key higher education preparing the specialists for the Ministry of Finance, the Project organized one day master-classes on European experience of Inter-budgetary relationsfor the professorial and teaching staff as well as students of this institute.
More than 100 hundred participants, including 40 teachers/professors and more than 60 students took part at the Master classes in Tashkent Financial Institute. Both students and teachers listened to the presentation of Mr. Ozlale with a keen interest and gave a lot of questions related to fiscal decentralization and recentralization. Umida Radjabova, a second year student of the Master course of Tashkent Financial Institute says: “After my graduation of the Institute I want to work at the Ministry of Finance and to make my contribution to the development of the National Public Finance System. This training was a great opportunity for me to obtain additional knowledge on Intergovernmental fiscal relations, which I can apply into practice in future working at the Ministry. I hope that this is not the sole training and UNDP will organize more trainings on Public Finance thematic for our Institute in upcoming future again”.
Workshop materials can be found at www.publicfinance.uz Project web-site.
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