Budgeting and fiscal management in transitional countries

The breadth and pace of fiscal management reform in countries in transition (CITs) has largely fallen short of expectations. While the timing of the transformation of the budgeting process from essentially a pure accounting mechanism during the communist era to a true fiscal management tool has not been identical in all CITs, the evolution of the reform process can be broken down into three distinct periods. During the first period, the early transition, most transitional economies saw a lack of budgeting and fiscal management reforms. In the second transition period, CITs put in place a set of fiscal policy and fiscal management reforms, practically always in response to a macroeconomic crisis. Renewed fiscal crisis spurred more structural fiscal reform efforts during the third, ongoing period of transition.