A Course on Legal Frameworks for Public Financial Management

On October 14-18, 2024, the IMF Legal Department (LEG) delivered a course on Public Financial Management (PFM) Legal Frameworks. The course was hosted by the JVI and included 27 participants from 14 countries from the JVI region. The majority of the participants were lawyers from Ministries of Finance, including General Counsels. The course participants also included lawyers from state audit institutions, Central Banks, and other agencies. This was the first time this course was offered at JVI. 

The course covered a variety of topics, including legal issues in the budget process, fiscal responsibility legal framework, legal considerations for independent fiscal institutions, key legal issues in public debt transparency, legal issues in designing and operating sovereign wealth funds, state-owned enterprises legal frameworks, and others. Innovative and cross-cutting areas, such as legal issues at the intersection of climate change, gender, and PFM, and PFM and Govtech, were also discussed and debated during the course. The course was enriched by presentations by the IMF Fiscal Affairs Department, and guest speakers representing the OECD and the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility of Spain, as well as a speaker who sits on The Executive Board of Norges Bank, the manager of the Government Pension Fund Norway. 

The course also offered the participants an opportunity to exchange experiences on the topics of mutual interest and share approaches to the issues commonly faced in legal frameworks governing PFM. The course was well-received and highly rated, particularly with regard to the opportunity for peer discussion. The participants also noted the advantage of comparative review of the national legal frameworks and offered useful suggestions to enhance future deliveries of the course. 

Alissa Ashcroft, Senior Counsel, Financial and Fiscal Law Division, Legal Department, IMF

Olya Kroytor, Counsel, Financial and Fiscal Law Division, Legal Department, IMF