Training on Public Finance Management (PFM) offers insights in the main concepts of PFM such as the budget cycle, institutions of budget management, multi-annual budgeting, external audit, accountability and corruption, and diagnostic PFM tools that are being used by the World Bank, European Commission, bilateral donors and country governments to assess the quality of PFM systems of countries.

ECORYS' expertise
Our PFM trainings are conducted by experienced ECORYS staff members who have extensive knowledge on the content of PFM as well as large training experience. ECORYS has significant experience of supporting public finance management reform and capacity building processes in Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States and in developing countries in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. These PFM reform projects often include large training components. Moreover, it has provided us with hands-on experience with budget management in practice. Various staff members of ECORYS have also previous hands-on work experience in budget management in the Netherlands (at the Ministry of Finance, Line Ministries, Court of Audit etc.). In addition, we have conducted several studies in the area of PFM over the last couple of years (for instance for the European Commission).
 
In addition to having large expertise on the content of PFM, ECORYS staff members have extensive training experience. Besides training in the context of PFM reform projects, ECORYS is providing PFM training courses to the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to other governments and bilateral donors. ECORYS is implementing the Public Finance Management Support Programme for the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which started in 2003 and will run to 2010. Within this programme ECORYS provides training and on-the-job coaching in the area of PFM to staff of 25 Netherlands Embassies in Africa, Asia, Latin-America and Eastern Europe. The training courses are well appreciated by our client. In addition to the activities at the Embassies, PFM Introduction Courses are given to headquarter staff working in the Hague, which also have received high ratings from the participants.

ECORYS has also provided various PFM training courses to other bilateral donors, including Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Austria. In addition, a PFM E-learning course has been developed and facilitated for the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The E-learning course has been highly valued by the participants. More recently, combinations of E-learning and classroom-based training (blended learning) have been offered to several donors.

• Budget cycle and institutions of budget management
• Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF)
• Performance budgeting
• Internal and external audit
• Fiscal decentralisation
• Debt management
• Taxation
• Accountability and corruption
• Gender budgeting
• Budgeting in sectors (e.g. education, health and environment)
• New aid modalities (e.g. general and sector budget support) 
• Diagnostic PFM tools such as Public Expenditure Review (PER), Country Financial Accountability Assessment (CFAA) and Public Expenditure & Financial Accountability (PEFA)

After the training, the participants should understand the main PFM concepts and tools, and know how to apply these in practice.

• PFM Introduction Course: 2 days
• Advanced PFM training on selected topics: 0.5 - 1 day per subject