The topic of the meeting was the report on the Budget Office.

National Assembly Deputy Speaker and Chairman of the Committee on Finance, State Budget and Control of Public Spending Veroljub Arsic said that in the half a year since its establishment the Budget Office has proven to be very helpful to the MPs and the Committee on Finance, State Budget and Control of Public Spending. Deputy Speaker Arsic underlined the importance of the Budget Office in view of the fact that Serbia is changing over to program budgeting, adding that it is useful for the National Assembly to hear as many experiences as possible in the area. “We have launched the Public Finance Supervision Portal and in cooperation with the Budget Office I expect good analytics, and I am sure that the National Assembly can exchange its experiences with the parliaments in the region”, said Arsic.

In the course of the meeting, the representatives of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy asked about the challenges the Budget Office faces in its day-to-day work, benefits of its operation, experiences in the region and whether the end of the project would endanger the sustainability of the Office. They also wanted to know whether the material the Office collates for the MPs’ needs should be improved and whether its operation as regards the control of public spending should be amended in any way.

The Budget Office was opened pursuant to the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the National Assembly and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy as part of project “Strengthening the National Assembly’s capacities for the promotion of efficient parliamentary oversight of budget spending”.