Reading: Niger Public Expenditure Tracking Survey

Source: W0rldbank Document, December 21 2008

1. Objective and Methodology of The Niger Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS)
1.1 Motivation and objectives
- The significant inefficiencies in public sector delivery of services
- Expenditure procedures lack reliable mechanisms for tracking and monitoring. It is not sure whether resources always reach to the intended beneficiaries.
- Identifying potential failures in public service delivery mechanism.
The PETS focuses on identifying the inefficiencies and delays in public spending execution in the education and health sectors in Niger.
2. Background on Niger's education and health sectors
- Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world
- Poverty Reduction Strategy in 2007 with three key pillars: 1) economic growth; 2) poverty eradication; 3) access to basic services --> education and health are essential
- Problems proven by data:
+ the highest spending per studen as a percentage of GDP per capita but the lowest lowest primary enrollment rate and the lowest completion rate.
+ Lowest spending rates for health. Lack of drugs, materials and personnel has resulted in persistent difficulties with access and quality of health services
3. Methodology
- The general methodology of a PETS is intuitively simple, consisting of charting budget flows and release mechanisms (funds and materials) through various government agencies and facilities. The in- and out-financial and material flows are compared (ideally reconciled) at each of the consecutive nodes of the observed spending channels that correspond to the specific resource distribution mechanisms. This is often referred to as vertical tracking.
- PETS is not an audit. It only identity the bottlenecks, resource discrepancies and delays occur in the distribution channels and whenever possible, makes recommendation on how to improve the systems to reduce these inefficiencies.
4 Sampling
The PETS sample design was regionally, but not nationally representative.
5. Implementation of PETS
The criteria for selecting expenditures for tracking were twofold: (i) the spending chain should be sufficiently important in terms of the proportion of the budget; and (ii) the chain should be sufficiently representative of the distribution mechanisms to warrant tracking. More precisely, the PETS tracks selected resource flows, both financial and materials, that account for a significant proportion of the sectors’ recurrent non-salary spending or that go through expenditure execution procedures/agencies which are prone to leakages, waste and delays.
Education: textbooks and notebooks in primary schools
Health: patient food expenditures, hospital supplies, essential medicines
6. Tracking textbooks, notebooks and drawing books in primary schools
- Record keeping in the education sector is a problem preventing greater transparency and potentially facilitating divergence of resources.
- despite all the apparent inefficiencies in the resource distribution systems, schools in the three regions surveyed manage to ensure that most students had access to textbooks by sharing books between two or three students and probably also by using used books
7. Tracking patients' food expenditures and hospital supplies
- The financial resource flows between the MEF and the MSP reveals three issues relevant to the PETS: accuracy of record keeping; delays; and discrepancies.
- There are significant discrepancies in financial flow records between the MSP and the district health offices. The quality of records at the district level is rather questionable, with frequent occurrences of implausible figures.
- The inequality of resource distribution was evident among different districts but the reasons behind these inequalities cannot be determined by the PETS itself.
First, the shorter the distribution channels are, the less likely the leakages. Second, the better the quality of records between two nodes, the less likely the leakages.