Public expenditure tracking surveys: lessons from Tanzania
This briefing look at the effectiveness of Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS). It particularly focuses on the PETS in Tanzania but also makes references to the way in which PETS worked in Uganda.
Despite anti-corruption having been a growth industry for more than a decade, success stories are relatively few and far between. The dramatic impact achieved by the PETS in Uganda has been one of the most cited successes. It is therefore interesting to note, that despite the apparent replicability of the approach and the considerable number of attempts to reproduce the Ugandan success elsewhere, there are few other examples of PETS having had an appreciable and sustained impact. Whereas the successful application of PETS in Uganda has received and continues to receive a lot of attention, less has been written about the experiences of PETS elsewhere. The Tanzanian experience clearly shows that PETS is not a silver bullet as vested interests can easily derail the process. It is criticised for being too complex to be transparent and a lack of awareness at local level.
The author concludes that at least three general lessons can be drawn by contrasting the Ugandan and Tanzanian stories:
- to assist the success of initiatives to improve public expenditure efficiency and accountability, it would be beneficial to anticipate potential resistance to reform
- development Partners need to consider their own incentives for engaging in an open and informed dialogue on the strengths and weaknesses of existing systems
- as well as learning from ‘best practice’, being informed about ‘poor practice’ is also important when learning from previous experiences.
