Results-oriented budgeting in Egypt

 
Keywords: Fiscal accountability, financial management, Results-oriented budgeting, public expenditure 
performance monitoring and evaluation 
 
 
1.0 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW 
Governments, either in the Eastern or Western hemispheres, are under increasing pressure to produce results that 
would lead to tangible outcomes for their citizens. There is general recognition of the importance of focusing on 
outcome for effective public management. 
The Arab Spring countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions are now experiencing 
mounting pressures to undertake bolder-style programs of reform in public financial management, to deliver 
public goods and services. The political reality in the regions dictates that the modes of reform vary from the 
standpoint that they may take shape out of home grown or extra-territorial/cross-border initiatives. Irrespective 
of the mode, the need for reform is multi-dimensional and irreversible.
The present paper is authored by the former Minister of Finance (1999-2004) and the former Director of the 
Fiscal Policy Reform Advisory Group to the Ministry of Finance to push the borders of evaluative knowledge 
and practice in a MENA-region country. The rationale for the authoring is to offer a hands-on experience of 
Egypt’s process towards budgeting for results and draw lessons in the "Arab Spring" environment. Result
-
oriented budgeting is being implemented in both the developed and developing worlds over many past decades 
with varying successes. It should be read as an experience in appropriate contextual settings with which 
1
Corresponding author 

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Interdisciplinary Journal of Research in Business ISSN: 2046-7141
Vol. 2, Issue. 9, (pp.13- 25)
|
2013
14
countries at a similar stage of economic development may take note of success areas and work to avoid potential 
pitfalls given cultural specificities. Although this paper is intended to testify to the Egyptian success story on 
results-oriented budgeting, the experiment has to be completed by expanding to all thirty-four government 
ministries, public economic authorities and public holding companies in the post-revolution state. This particular 
aspect challenges the process of systemic experimentation for the sustenance of a living organism. 
The call posed in this paper is to never lose sight of the appropriate measures to institute performance-based 
budgeting (PBB) upon conceptualization, launching and implementation. No one can deny that in a country that 
is faced with continuous growth in the number of unemployed highly-educated graduates, and other persistent 
fiscal and economic challenges, some policy actions need to be taken at all cost. The cost we mean is 
accountability, transparency, responsiveness to citizens and building the bridges of trust. 
The paper is composed of five parts: the first is this introduction. The second part discusses the salient features 
encountered in the transformation from inputs-based to outcomes-based budgeting in selected countries of the 
east and west. The third part is a discourse of the country-specific economic juncture in Egypt that instigated the 
irrevocable necessity to adopt results-oriented budgeting. This is manifested by reviewing the features of the 
present Egyptian budgeting system. Section three, also, summarizes the two World Bank (WB) reports that 
handle the readiness and possibility of adopting the new approach to budgeting for performance. The fourth 
section highlights the genuine commitment and sincere efforts within the Egyptian ministries, to participate in 
fiscal reforms that touch upon myriad fields of development in public service delivery.
The multi-
faceted assessments portray both the WB’s and the Government of Egypt’s (GOE’s
) perspectives on 
project progress and prospective challenges. Section five closes with lessons learnt and a vision for the road 
forward.
We found out that the steps followed lacked the realization of its terminal, namely the effectuation of sustaining 
the results-oriented monitoring and evaluation in pilot ministries and replicating using a whole-of-government 
approach. Contextual political interventions and reshuffled fiscal reform priorities are indispensable risks to 
policy, program and project continuity. On the upside, the piloting activity sustained informally despite of the 
absence of an overarching government champion. It is hoped by the authors that fiscal necessity and popular 
pressures resulting from the 25
th
of January 2011 Revolution will dictate the revival of results-orientation in the 
public finance arena, same as in other countries of the developed and developing worlds.