At the "Participatory Budgeting at the Local Level" conference on September 6, Armenia's Minister of Finance Vahe Hovhannisyan made a statement regarding the effectiveness of government programs.
The event was organized with the support of the "Good Governance for Local Development in the South Caucasus" program, implemented by the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany, and co-financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in Armenia.
In his speech, Hovhannisyan emphasized that programs implemented in Armenia may have legitimate expenses and costs but fail to achieve the desired results. The minister praised GIZ's contribution to Armenia's public administration reforms, highlighting two key achievements: the introduction of program budgeting in 2019 and the initiation of the process to implement an evaluation system two years ago.
Vahe Hovhannisyan stressed the critical importance of an efficiency evaluation system for improving the quality of public finance management. He noted that previously, program assessments were mainly focused on legal compliance, emphasizing procedural violations and corruption. However, it was often overlooked that programs could be lawful but ineffective.
The minister underscored the importance of implementing an efficiency evaluation system as a tool for objectively assessing the performance of government programs. He expressed confidence that Armenia will soon have a fully operational evaluation system, which is a crucial step towards enhancing the effectiveness of public financial management.
