Performance-Based Program Budgeting in Ukraine (with a Focus on the Local Budget Level)

Abstract

In Ukraine, the implementation of performance-based budgeting (PBB) and of the comprehensive analysis and review of the efficiency and feasibility of expenditures by sectors started approximately 10 years ago, but processes are still in the initial phases. The goal of this chapter is to evaluate existing experiences in general and to provide a specific case study of the road infrastructure programme in the capital city of Kyiv. The results of our analysis show that Ukraine faces many challenges in the process of implementing PBB at the local budget level. Reports on budget execution are currently based on the analysis of only certain socioeconomic indicators and do not provide comprehensive coverage of customer satisfaction with budget services—in most cases, only cost and product indicators are used. Moreover, subprogrammes are assigned too many indicators, and these indicators are formally drawn up without a proper analysis of the reasons for previously underperformed or overfulfilled performance indicators. Also, the past achievements are not considered when establishing target performance indicators for the next year. The final issue is the lack of a clear connection between strategic documents, programme targets, and programme budgets.