In view of improved programming and monitoring of EU Budget Support in Armenia, DT Global and 4Assist were assigned by the EU Delegation to Armenia to provide assistance on the EU Budget Support (BS) operations in Armenia, and to conduct a Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) assessment in the country, in cooperation with an expert from the Asian Development Bank.

The PEFA framework is used by the European Commission to assess the operational performance of the Public Financial Management (PFM) system for budget support operations and as part of its Risk Management Framework.

On February 24, 2023, an EU-financed PFM-PEFA Donor Coordination conference was held in Yerevan to present the Government Fiscal and Debt Policy Priorities and the PEFA-2016 Framework and methodology. The event gathered more than 60 participants from the Ministry of Finance, government institutions and other public bodies, donor organisations, in particular WB, IMF and ADB, and development partners present in Armenia. As indicated by our Sebastien Dubost leading this project, “a common takeaway from the meeting was the importance of PEFA on assessing the extent to which the PFM system is an enabling factor for achieving policy and budgetary outcomes”.

The PEFA assessment is carried out by a truly impressive team that brings in a robust blend of expertise in carrying out PEFA assessments, David Biggs, Elisaveta Teneva and Iain Rennie, an expert from the Asian Development Bank.

Following the PEFA exercise, this EU funded project will provide technical assistance (TA) to the EU Delegation to Armenia and to the Government of Armenia in order to program and identify, prepare and monitor future budget support operations. In doing so, we will place utmost importance on assisting the Government of Armenia to improve PFM performance.

Our Elen Ispiryan, carrying a life-time experience in the entire cycle of the EU Budget Support operations explains: “Budget support is one of the most effective aid modalities in EU development assistance, promoting sustainable development through national systems of partner countries. It is directly linked to reforms and developmental results, assisting the partner countries in their policy reform agenda and linking the disbursement of BS funds to the achievement of reform milestones.”

Our TA PFM-BS team is comprised of three in-house partner associates of 4Assist building on decades of experience in PFM systems and Budget Support, Sebastien Dubost, Irina Grigoryan and Elen Ispiryan.

     Donor Coordination Meeting in Yerevan during the Armenia PEFA assessment 2023

4Assist has been awarded three contracts since September 2021. We have successfully completed the first two contracts: one in Cambodia, entitled “public Financial Management Support for the establishment for national home-grown School Feeding Programme in Cambodia”; and a second one “support in Public Financial Management, Design of the Regional Transition Framework for School Feeding Programmes and support to Country Offices in Asia and the Pacific”.

We now have the pleasure to collaborate once again with the United Nations World Food Programme, Regional Bureau for South East Asia in Bangkok (WFP RBB). The requested services in this third contract, include supporting the WFP staff in the transition process of handing the WFP-funded School Feeding Programmes over to partner governments. This will require assessing financial and institutional capacity needed by the target countries to enable nationally-owned and sustainable School Feeding.

The overarching objective is to support both regional and country WFP offices staff in engaging more effectively with national stakeholders in line with the transition strategy. The WFP staff will be expected to help improve the Financial Capacity and Institutional Capacity and Coordination of School Feeding Programmes and enable the national actors to take over the programmes in a sustainable manner. The utmost goal of these programmes is to provide a free meal on every school day, improving nutrition, promoting school enrolment and school attendance.

The Facility will provide consulting services in support of a sound programming, implementation, monitoring and visibility of the EU’s bilateral development cooperation strategy in the Lao PDR. This will be to ensure consolidation of the EU project cycle management and policy dialogue, but also the effective implementation, coordination, monitoring and visibility of Global Europe / Global Gateway joint work, under the scope of the Team Europe Strategy 2021-2025.

Having successfully supported the EUD to Laos in its mandate for EU-Lao Cooperation for the past 4.5 years, we are now awarded the new phase of the EU-Lao Cooperation Facility. We stand again ever enthusiastic, fully prepared, and well equipped to continue supporting EUD in its new ambitions and approaches, amid a new, rapidly changing context.