March 22, 2023: Senior Government officials and Development Partners last week convened for the Public Finance Management (PFM) Coordination Forum to deliberate on how to adapt climate change in public finance management ecosystems to achieve sustainable development.

The discussions were informed by the impact of climate shocks which affect Rwanda’s social-economic development and consequently climate action is critical for sustainable PFM stability for Rwanda in particular.

Setting the context of the forum, the Minister of State in charge of National Treasury Richard Tusabe noted that adopting climate into PFM ecosystems would ensure climate change is at the heart of whatever the private sector, government and other actors are engaged in, in order to build buffers in terms of resilience. He further advocated for citizens’ engagement in climate change discussions and initiatives, noting that, without their participation little can be achieved in terms of sustainability.

“Climate change is a big risk which calls for climate mitigation, adaptation, to ensure sustainability. This is the responsibility of government, private sector, and CSOs. It should be a country wide approach if we are going to get this implemented and sustainable,” Minister Tusabe said.

The PFM coordination co-chair Jean Michel Swalens called on Development Partners to support Government in sustaining the necessary PFM reforms especially those that promote the integration of climate change into public finance management using country systems. This, he said, would significantly contribute to the achievement of vision 2050.

By accessing the IMF Resilience Sustainability Trust, Rwanda has outlined and committed to 3 streams of climate sensitive reforms which include tagging climate change relevant expenditure in the budget and execution to better inform decision making. Currently the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning is currently pursuing reforms to mainstream climate change across PFM and Public Investment Management.

Public Finance Management coordination forum is a bi-annual conference which brings together senior government officials and development partners to discuss various aspects of Rwanda’s development aspirations and collectively find solutions to bottlenecks.