PBOs urged to modernise as fiscal pressures grow

**Staff Writer **

Parliamentary Budget Offices (PBOs) across Africa need to strengthen their institutional capacity and modernise their analytical tools as governments face growing pressure to deliver public value from increasingly constrained resources.

Minister of finance, Ericah Shafudah made the call at the 9th Annual Conference of the African Network of Parliamentary Budget Offices (AN-PBOs) in Swakopmund on Monday, saying PBOs are central to improving transparency, accountability and scrutiny of public finances.

Shafudah said governments across Africa are being required to do more with limited resources while demonstrating that public spending produces tangible results and maintaining citizens’ trust.

She said PBOs play an important role by translating complex fiscal information into analysis that legislatures can use to scrutinise government spending and policy decisions.

“Parliamentary Budget Offices sit at the very centre of that demand,” Shafudah said, adding that PBOs provide legislatures with information to examine how public resources are raised, allocated and spent, as well as their impact.

The minister said Namibia’s own shift to Outcome-Based Budgeting demonstrated why institutional capacity and power matter in the budget process.

Over recent months, Namibia has been transitioning towards Outcome-Based Budgeting, moving away from a narrow focus on inputs and line items towards a framework that examines what government expenditure has achieved.

Shafudah said the transition required new frameworks, capacity and accountability practices across government, from central government to regional and local authorities.

She said budget reform was therefore not merely a technical exercise, but an institutional one that required the offices and officials responsible for scrutiny and analysis to be adequately empowered, resourced and modernised.

“The modernisation of the PBO toolkit that this session will discuss over the coming days speaks directly to that same challenge,” she said.

According to Shafudah, African fiscal environments are becoming more complex, with governments dealing with debt sustainability pressures, climate and disaster financing needs, increased demands for budget transparency and citizens who expect timely and credible fiscal information.

She said PBOs could not meet these demands using outdated tools.

The minister also highlighted the importance of institutional power, saying well-resourced and technically capable PBOs could strengthen rather than weaken the work of finance ministries.

She said stronger PBOs would help ensure that difficult budgetary trade-offs were understood and debated by both the executive and legislature, and ultimately by citizens.

Shafudah said the AN-PBO network provided an important platform for institutions at different stages of development to exchange methodologies, knowledge and practical experience.

She said Namibia remained committed to supporting the network and its efforts to strengthen parliamentary budget oversight across the continent.