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Public Financial Management for PRSP - Deutsches Institut für ...

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Stefan Leiderer et al.<br />

These features are pervasive throughout Malawi’s PFM system and the<br />

budget process in particular. The following section discusses them in more<br />

detail and shows how they relate to each other.<br />

All actors involved in the PFM process contribute to these outcomes to varying<br />

degrees and are at the same time its victims. How each of the key areas<br />

and factors analysed in the last chapter contributes to this outcome is analysed<br />

in Section 7.2.<br />

The results of this study are then looked at in the context of recent literature<br />

on PFM in general and institutional development and public administration in<br />

sub-Saharan Africa in Section 7.3. Section 7.4 concludes the study by looking<br />

at the consequences of uncertainty <strong>for</strong> PFM in Malawi.<br />

7.1 Central features of Malawi’s PFM: uncertainty, ad hoc<br />

planning and budgeting and in<strong>for</strong>mal practices<br />

Uncertainty, an ad hoc mode of planning and budgeting as well as the use of<br />

in<strong>for</strong>mal practices are common features of PFM in Malawi. The three phenomena<br />

are closely linked to each other as shown in this chapter. To make<br />

the argument clear, the three analytical concepts are briefly introduced in the<br />

next sections.<br />

7.1.1 The overriding feature: systemic uncertainty<br />

A very prominent and pervasive finding of this empirical research on PFM in<br />

Malawi is a high level of uncertainty, which impacts negatively on PFM at all<br />

levels of government. ‘Uncertainty’ is the analytical term chosen by the research<br />

team to sum up all evidence and comments collected on this phenomenon.<br />

Thus, the term refers to a systemic kind of uncertainty, which.<br />

cannot be ascribed to the lack of in<strong>for</strong>mation or knowledge of individual<br />

actors only. Systemic uncertainty is created because the rules, procedures and<br />

institutions of a governance system (here: the PFM system of Malawi in its<br />

particular context) are not entirely reliable and, there<strong>for</strong>e, do not provide<br />

long-term predictability. At the same time, the actors involved do not receive<br />

relevant in<strong>for</strong>mation timely and systematically. However, these features are<br />

preconditions <strong>for</strong> the establishment of routine standard bureaucratic procedures<br />

in an effective and efficient law-based public administration.<br />

126 German Development <strong>Institut</strong>e

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