Key issues for the country and citizens are addressed during seminars of the NIK Council. One of those issues, little known to the public, certainly is the performance budget which operates in parallel with the traditional budget, although it plays the role of an additional explanatory tool. This year’s seminar of the NIK Council was attended by: the NIK Council members, scientists and experts dealing with the performance-based budgeting, as well as representatives of the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland and the Chancellery of the President of the Council of Ministers.
NIK President Marian Banaś said that in the past decade NIK has conducted several audits on performance-based budgeting in view of efficiency and accountability of public spending and management control. According to Mr Banaś, irregularities identified by NIK indicated that the performance-based system was not an effective spending management tool to achieve planned objectives. NIK President also underlined that the performance-based system was not integrated with activity plans of individual ministers. It could not be fully used in management control, then.
Results of the audit “Planning and execution of performance-based spending system in view of the budget system reform” were outlined by NIK Vice-President Małgorzata Motylow who supervised the audit. “NIK negatively evaluated the functioning of the performance budget as a tool to improve effectiveness and efficiency of public funds management. At the central level, the performance-based budgeting did not play any significant role in public funds management” – said Vice-President of NIK.
The audit details were presented by Stanisław Jarosz, Director of NIK’s Department of Budget and Finance. “The performance budget did not help improve the way public funds are managed. Nor did it make the split of responsibilities for public tasks more transparent. Also, it did not streamline communication with stakeholders” – underlined Mr Jarosz. “After 14 years, since the Council of Ministers decided to implement the performance budget, it was difficult to identify at least one objective that was met thanks to this tool.
Statement of NIK President Marian Banaś
Statement of President of Supreme Audit Office of Poland Marian Banaś
