Lao People's Democratic Republic - Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) Assessment

Efficient utilization of overall resources through sound public financial management (PFM), good governance and oversight are priorities in the Lao PDR government’s reform agenda. The strengthening of PFM systems is fundamental to the successful development of Lao PDR and has been center stage in the Government’s policy agenda. There has been slow progress since 2010 in strengthening the quality of PFM systems and processes and there has also been a pause in the PFM reform agenda since 2013. This Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) Lao PDR 2018 is intended to assess the current state of PFM in Lao PDR. This PEFA uses the upgraded 2016 methodology that has more demanding PFM standards with new calibration and scoring criteria. While it is expected that the assessment generates relatively low scores and reveal severe PFM performance gaps. The Government expects that the narrative will also highlight the area of ongoing or planned reform action in order to link the analysis to the existing areas of the new PFM reform agenda and to support the post-PEFA dialogue on the priorities and sequencing of the reform actions. this context, the GoL agreed at the end of 2016 to carry out a PEFA self-assessment managed by the WB and financed by the EU, to establish a diagnostic study of the PFM system using the PEFA 2016 methodology. It is expected that the PEFA exercise gives further impetus to the momentum created by the launch of the PFM reform agenda, mobilizing the participating institutions on the subsequent dialogue on PFM reform policy decisions. The overall objective of the PEFA assessment is to provide a baseline with an evidence-based PFM performance assessment to guide the Government’s PFM reform strategy and potential engagement with its development partners in further strengthening PFM in the country.