The Ministry of Finance and Economy approves the Financial Planning Tool, as part of the Guidelines for the municipalities

Dldp has been particularly active and quite successful in national policy activities in the field of Public Finance Management in 2016. The experience gained from dldp over the years has been translated into a significant contribution to the draft law of the on local finances. The law was drafted jointly with Ministry of Finance and Economy, with contributions from PLGP / USAID (revenue share) and dldp / SDC (part of Public Finance Management). The PFM section gained the consensus of key international actors -WB, IMF, EU, and local actors. This is the culmination of all the support of dldp and lessons learned over the years.

Dldp has developed curricula and tools for the municipal experts of PFM and in collaboration with Ministry of Finance is disseminating these curricula and tools nationwide. In order to offer technical assistance to the finance municipal experts on the elaboration of FPT (Financial Planning Tool) has created a help desk in collaboration with the experts of Ministry of Finance and Economy. With update of the FPT in collaboration with MoFE the new legal framework on local finances was reflected. Further on, based on the international experience a new system of financial classification at local level, based on international standards (COFOG), and was harmonized with that one of central level. COFOG is abbreviation for Classification of the Functions of Government, and was developed in its current version in 1999 by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and published by the United Nations Statistical Division as a standard classifying the purposes of government activities. The new system of classification enables comparisons over time and horizontally with other municipalities; moreover, it facilitates the integration of municipal financial planning information into National Treasury. Furthermore, all expenditure items of the classification system are precisely described and guidance is in place how to link the output of the FPT with the MTBP. In addition a guidance on MTBP (Medium-Term Budget Program) was prepared from dldp. The guidance supports the preparation of a comprehensive, concise MTBP document, which is easy to read, and complies with the legal requirements of Albania. The FPT, including the new financial classification and MTPB guidance were approved from MoFE as part of the Guidelines of MoFE for the municipalities in the elaboration of Medium-Term Budget Program.

The process was conducted in close collaboration with experts from MoFE and State Treasury and involved local experts from municipalities, and national and international service providers from University of Luzern.