By Mike Thatcher
24 June 2009
There is a ‘critical shortage’ of professional public financial management staff across Africa, according to a finance expert from the World Bank.
Gert van der Linde, the Bank’s lead financial management specialist, told yesterday’s international seminar that it was hard to attract people to work in the African public sector. This was because of the poor relative pay levels and a lack of civil service reforms.
‘We can’t attract them and when we train them up we lose them to the private sector,’ he said. ‘There is a divide between professional development for the private sector and for the public sector.’
Van der Linde said that the World Bank was working with CIPFA on a pilot scheme in Tanzania to improve this situation.
Progress had been made, he stressed, but much more was needed. He quoted from a World Bank and Brookings survey of 31 African countries, which showed that at least 25 had adopted reforms involving internal audit, external audit, procurement and payroll.
But many of the reforms had been applied centrally and had not reached local government level. Moreover, professional development of staff had been ‘left by the wayside’, he suggested.
‘There has been a lot of attention on the legal frameworks and budgeting methodologies, but there has not been much about the development of professional skills in the public sector.’
There was a ‘very strong role’ for CIPFA and local accountancy bodies in developing these skills across Africa, he added.
The seminar was chaired by Mark Lowcock, the director general of country programmes at the Department for International Development. It also included contributions from CIPFA’s outgoing president, Caroline Mawhood, and its international director, Caroline Rickatson.
Lowcock told delegates that the department was very supportive of CIPFA’s ‘whole systems’ approach as outlined in the institute’s new consultation paper on public financial management.
