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

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<strong>Public</strong> <strong>Financial</strong> <strong>Management</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>PRSP</strong> Implementation in Malawi<br />

gic development plans, the District Development Plans – DDPs, and <strong>for</strong> submitting<br />

them to the MoLGRD. 18<br />

In rural districts, the District Secretariat and the District Assembly are the<br />

most important actors in the PFM system. The District Secretariats <strong>for</strong>m the<br />

administrative bodies of the districts. They manage the district’s budget planning<br />

and execution process, i.e. they <strong>for</strong>mulate the DDP, and are responsible<br />

<strong>for</strong> the <strong>for</strong>mulation of annual budgets as well as budget implementation and<br />

control. The District Assembly (DA) is the legislative body at rural local<br />

level, among other things responsible <strong>for</strong> approving DDPs and annual budgets.<br />

The DA is composed of elected councillors; each ward within a district sends<br />

one councillor to the Assembly. The chair (mayor in cities) is elected among<br />

the councillors and heads the Assembly. Furthermore, there are three additional<br />

groups of members groups without voting power. These members are<br />

the TAs (Traditional Authorities) who are the chiefs and sub-chiefs of areas;<br />

members of National Parliament (MP) from constituencies that are within the<br />

geographical limits of the district; and finally five additional individuals who<br />

are appointed by the elected members of the DA and who represent various<br />

interest groups <strong>for</strong>m civil society (Hussein 2004, 116–118).<br />

The administrative body of the DA is the District Secretariat, which is composed<br />

of a District Commissioner (DC), a Director of Finance (DoF); a Director<br />

of Planning and Development (DPD); a Director of Works (DoW); and<br />

a Director of Administration (DoA). All these positions are hired directly by<br />

the MoLGRD. Together with the District Health Officer (DHO) and the District<br />

Education Manager (DEM), who are the heads of their respective line<br />

ministry’s deconcentrated units in the district, they <strong>for</strong>m the District Executive<br />

Committee (DEC). The DEC is thus the administrations’ highest committee<br />

responsible <strong>for</strong> preparation of decision making by the Assembly, especially<br />

with regard to strategic development planning and PFM related issues.<br />

Figure 3 illustrates the institutional set-up as established by the NDP and the<br />

Local Government Act.<br />

18 Every district develops a District Development Plan (DDP), from which Annual Investment<br />

Plans are derived.<br />

German Development <strong>Institut</strong>e 67

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