The Parliamentary Centre’s Regional Office in Dakar

Second Budget Training Workshop held in Dakar

On May 10 th and 11 th 2006, the Regional Office of the Parliamentary Centre in Dakar and the Finance Committee of the National Assembly of Senegal organized a second workshop on the budget process. Like the First Workshop, which was held on October 25 th and 26 th, this workshop was set up at the request of the Finance Committee with a view to addressing shortcomings in the budget oversight process within the Parliament of Senegal.

The general objective of the workshop was to build the capacities of parliamentarians, particularly the members of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, in order to improve the impact of parliamentary contribution to the oversight of national budget legislation implementation.

Forty (40) participants attended the two-day training workshop, including 22 members of parliament and 2 representatives from staff. Five (5) women MPs were present, that is 23% of all the MPs attending. In all, 11 women attended the workshop, that is 28% of all participants. At the opening session and during the workshop, the speaker of the National Assembly was represented by the third deputy-speaker Babacar Gaye.

The Minister in charge of relations with Institutions, Awa Diop Fall, attended the opening ceremony, and 2 representatives from the Ministry were present for the duration of the proceedings.

The Ministry of Finance was represented by several people, including the Budget Director, Mor Sall.

CIDA was represented by Agathe Frappier, Head of Canadian Cooperation and Director of the Senegal Program, José Montabes, Deputy-director of the Senegal Program and Médoune Cissé, expert in Governance at Canadian Cooperation.

The Regional Office had invited Guy Amédée Ajanohoun, a former minister , MP and chair of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly of Benin to act as moderator/facilitator. Resource-people included a justice of the Accounts Court as well representatives of government and civil society.

The workshop contributed to building the capacities of Senegalese parliamentarians for budget oversight and provided a forum for exchanging ideas among members of the Finance Committee, the Accounts Court and civil society. It was also an opportunity for the chair of the Committee to make suggestions on instituting reforms to improve the Committee’s role in respect of budget oversight.

As follow-up, the Regional Office of the Parliamentary Centre is planning to meet with the Committee chairs of the Assembly as well as with CIDA in order to identify the needs of the members of committees and determine to what extent this budget support program could be continued in the long term to strengthen the expertise of parliamentarians and their staff.