Public Expenditure Reviews (PERs)

Public expenditure is one of the critical ingredients of a country’s development.  Public expenditure issues therefore touch on virtually every aspect of the World Bank’s work, often defining the relationship between macroeconomic and sectoral concerns.  The Bank’s major vehicle for analyzing these issues is a public expenditure review (PER).  As part of the World Bank’s country economic and sector work, a PER is undertaken to assist the borrowers in understanding their development problems and potential solutions as well as help illuminate the World Bank’s own country assistance strategy.  One of the major factors contributing to the success of the ensuing country lending program is therefore the quality of analysis undertaken in the PER.  In an effort to improve the treatment in PERs of human development issues in general, and education sector issues in particular, the Human Development Network of the World Bank has formulated guidance notes for analyzing public expenditure in the human development sectors.  The main goals of these guidance notes is to spark the imagination of analysts, to help them learn from better than average examples, and to make it easier to find the many resources already available.

Download: Human Development Public Expenditure Reviews Guidance Notes (pdf - 7.82MB)