Purpose and Objectives

The ‘Reimagining Public Finance’ initiative aims to unlock the potential of public financial management – the how of public finance - to generate positive development outcomes.  In doing so it aims to rethink public financial management reforms to ensure that they are designed and implemented in a way that best supports governments’ fiscal and public policy objectives and the achievement of development outcomes.

The main proposition of the initiative is for public financial management (PFM) reform to focus deliberately on the role that public finance can play in promoting better development outcomes, by shifting the focus from improving PFM systems in isolation to deliberately using PFM as a lever to drive better public sector results which contribute to development. 

The initiative’s outcome-led approach is intended as complementary to ongoing efforts to promote PFM and sectoral reform.  It aims to help different actors in the realm of PFM—from governments to donors, and from oversight actors to citizens—better direct PFM systems and processes towards the achievement of development outcomes. This involves working on the interactions between PFM and fiscal policy and between PFM and sector policies and systems.  

The initiative is intentionally a collaborative endeavor, and this website presents preliminary ideas on a proposed structure and method for adopting such an outcome-led approach. We encourage anyone to get involved in the conversation and provide their feedback so that we can further develop the approach together. 

A global report will be prepared synthesizing the first phase of research and feedback from the conversation and conference.  Following this a toolbox will be prepared and, most importantly, countries will be invited to apply and adapt the approach in their PFM reform efforts to make Public Finance work for development outcomes. To learn more about the initiative click here. To provide feedback click here.