News Interregional Training on Fiscal Federalism and Public Finance

Foundation organises training for selected staff of Ministries of Finance at the Federal Government and the Federal Member State level in Somalia

From 21 to 22 November 2016, the Max Planck Foundation organised the fifth Interregional Training for selected staff of Federal and Federal Member State Ministries of Finance in Somalia. This Interregional Training was the fifth of a series of such trainings, which aim at bringing together representatives from line Ministries of the Federal Government and the emerging Federal Member States of Somalia to be trained on models of other federal state systems in Africa and beyond and to discuss pertinent issues of the Somali federalisation process from a comparative perspective. The topic of this fifth Interregional Training was fiscal federalism and public finance in a federal system and was attended by five representatives from the Federal Ministry of Finance, five representatives from each of the respective line Ministries from Galmudug, Jubbaland, Puntland, and South West State, plus five representatives from the regional governments of Hiraan, Middle Shabelle and Benaadir.

With the state formation process being complete, and the contours of a federal state emerging, the division of revenue and expenditure responsibilities and common standards and procedures of public finance between the Federal Government and Federal Member States is becoming very important. Hence, the training was not only timely but also beneficial in that it sought to build the knowledge of the technical staff that work within the line Ministries at the Federal Government and Federal Member State levels of government which are central to the management of fiscal federalism and public finance.

The training forms the fifth of such Interregional Trainings delivered under the Max Planck Foundation’s project ‘Support to the Somali Federalisation Process’, which is being funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.