A Swiss-funded programme to strengthen public finance management at the local and regional levels in Peru has entered its second phase, with a virtual launch event gathering high-level diplomats and subnational government leaders.

How do you carry out training for 5,000+ public officials across Peru during a pandemic? Our local Public Finance Management team explained how they achieved this at the country’s recent National Innovation Week. The answer: social media and asynchronous communication.

Thanks in part to the unconventional use of social networking tools like Facebook and WhatsApp for distance learning, the training initiative is now snowballing. Joint workshops have been taking place with government ministries and civil society organisations across all regions.

In these times of global crisis, strong and transparent management of public finances is even more essential. How governments manage their money has a real and immediate impact on peoples’ lives. It affects critical issues such as access to education and whether hospitals have enough trained staff and medical equipment.

In early April, more than 770 public officials across Peru took our latest virtual training course on public financial management (PFM). This free seven-week course is part of a programme financed by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) to strengthen standards of PFM in 11 subnational governments.

Last week’s blog about corruption risks in natural disaster situations triggered some interesting feedback. Many observers are seeing the same as I am in the international response to the covid-19 pandemic – namely, that there are striking similarities with the response to earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters in the past.

The agility that we pride ourselves on at the Basel Institute is often tested, not least by political turbulence in our partner countries. Beyond its implications for society and its catastrophic impact on victims and health systems, the coronavirus pandemic is the biggest test for us so far.

More than 770 public officials across Peru have this week started a virtual training course on "Transversal Management of Administrative and Functional Systems".

We are happy to announce that our Public Finance Management programme in Peru has been extended for another four years, following an excellent performance in the programme’s external evaluation.

Launched in 2015 and run out of our regional office in Lima, the programme is funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). It aims to strengthen public financial management among 11 local and regional governments in Peru.

Trujillo, capital city of La Libertad region in northwestern Peru, has become the country’s 10th local government authority to develop and approve a Code of Conduct for public officials and other civil servants.

As with the other nine Codes of Conduct, it was created in a participatory manner by the local government with technical assistance from the Subnational PFM Programme of the Swiss SECO Cooperation, implemented by the Basel Institute in Peru.

PEFA, the international organisation that sets standards for measuring the performance of Public Financial Management (PFM) worldwide, has published a new version of its Volume IV Handbook on Using PEFA to support Public Financial Management improvement. The forward-looking handbook represents the first attempt to go beyond pure performance evaluation. Instead, the emphasis is on the action plans that come after the evaluation.