Public financial management

Strong public financial management systems underpin inclusive state institutions, enabling better delivery of public services, the promotion of long-term poverty reduction, and economic growth. We design and implement context-specific public finance reforms to translate governments’ ambitions into tangible impact.

Public Financial Management (PFM) is a central practice area at Oxford Policy Management. We have a long history of implementing PFM reforms in low- and middle-income countries, with our offices in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia Pacific. We deploy strong local teams supported with regional and global expertise. Our experience covers all areas of the budget cycle from macro-fiscal analysis, planning, budgeting, and public investment management to expenditure tracking studies and reviews, sub-national governance, external scrutiny, and programme evaluations.  

We also support sustainable increases in domestic revenue through policy reforms and improvements to tax administration. We have supported strengthening of tax data quality, taxpayer services, tax digitisation, tax compliance and risk management, and taxpayer registration. We understand that sustainable tax policy and administration reforms require behavioural change. Our work is built on understanding revenue authorities and taxpayers, identifying the obstacles to and triggers for change.  

Our teams draw on other disciplines to complement their public finance and revenue work, including macroeconomics, fiscal forecasting, social sector expenditure analysis, climate change, emerging thinking on risk and resilience, and growth diagnostics. We are well networked with researchers working at the frontiers of economic development, macroeconomics, and public financial management.

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