Сonference in Kyiv City State Administration

     The conference was opened by Oleksandr Popov, who emphasized the need for introducing Performance Program Budgeting in Kyiv, especially in the context of implementing the Program of Economic Reforms promoted by President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych for the years 2010-2014 and entitled “Prosperous Society, Competitive Economy, Effective State.”
     KCSA has initiated activities aimed at reforming the city’s financial system and has been actively collaborating in this area with the Institute for Budgetary and Socio-Economic Research, which is implementing the Municipal Finance Strengthening Initiative project and in particular one of its key components - the further implementation of PPB for local budgets.
     According to Volodymyr Repik, head of KCSA Principal Finance Directorate, “any reform requires a well-trained cadre.” He said that in order to address this task, the KCSA, with support from the MFSI/IBSER project, conducted a series of training workshops in September and October 2010. The training workshops were devoted to implementing PPB budgeting for the Kyiv city district budgets. The training was delivered according to the Work Plan of the Principal Finance Directorate and key spending units of the Kyiv city budget and according to the training schedule set by MFSI/IBSER project experts.
     As a result, by 28 October 2010, twelve training workshops had been delivered in the following sectors: Education; Social Protection and Social Security; Culture and Arts; Physical Culture and Sports; Healthcare; Housing and Communal Services; Transport and Telecommunications; Public Administration; Mass Media; and Construction. All in all, representatives of 37 key Kyiv city budget spending units, 11 recipients of city budget funds and the Kyiv Council Standing Committee on Budget and Socioeconomic Development, Healthcare, and Social Protection had taken part in the training workshops. A total of 350 persons have passed through training as of the time of this writing. 
     Iryna Shcherbyna, Director General of IBSER, noted in her presentation that the Institute’s experts emphasized in particular both training on special features and the hands-on aspects of formulating budget programs and their performance indicators, the specifics of document flow and reporting, the procedure of preparing a draft budget and organizing its execution.
     The participants have concluded that PPB-based budget formulation will make it possible for them to focus on results and the degree of citizen satisfaction with the services provided with public funds, rather than concentrating on network expansion and the maintenance of institutions. Such a simple and, at the same time, comprehensive approach will make it possible to realistically appraise the economic and social results achieved from using the funds.