In keeping with what has become an annual event, the Ministry of Economy and Finance is organising a technical workshop to draft the 2009 Gender Report, with the support of the UNIFEM, from the 24th to the 27th March ,2008. Like "manual for Gender-sensitive Budgetary Reform", this report, which has been appended to the Finance Act since 2005, is one of the tools that have been put in place within the framework of Gender-sensitive Budgeting programme.
The opening session, presided over by Mr. CHAFIKI, Director of Studies and Financial Forecasts, was held in the presence of representatives of the UNIFEM, civil society, and the 20 departments involved in drafting the 2009 Gender Report.
The technical workshop and the drafting of the Gender Report is "an important process of evaluation of public policy. In this fourth session, 80% of the national budget will be included in the evaluation", said Mr. CHAFIKI, in his opening speech.
The 2008 Finance Act has seen the official addition of the Gender Report to other reports appended to the Budget, whereas in the past it was only appended to the Economic and Financial Report devised by the Department of Studies and Financial Forecasts.
Significant progress has thus been made in installing the instruments of the GSB. In order to ensure further progress, Mr. CHAFIKI recommended a qualitative improvement in the elaboration of the Gender Budget.
This qualitative improvement is made possible by the international recognition of the Moroccan initiative, and the commitment of the Moroccan government to integrate the Gender approach to the elaboration of the Budget, and to encourage all ministerial departments to take this approach into account, in keeping with the instruction letter circulated by the Prime Minister.
Mr. CHAFIKI added that the aforementioned improvements must also be achieved, added, to be able to take part in the debate over the Reform of the Internal Law of Finance brought up in the Government`s statement, which will provide the legal and institutional basis of the budgetary reform under way. This reform has so far been conducted in a pragmatic and progressive manner, he stated.
Great expectations depend upon the organisation of this session which is, according to Mr. CHAFIKI, a virtual laboratory for the qualitative improvement of the Gender Report.
Addressing participants, he stressed the necessity of adopting a comprehensive approach in evaluating public policy, and integrating the approach to credit globalisation around structural inter-sartorial projects. He added that it was possible to achieve such objective this year, particularly in agriculture and fisheries, which would facilitate the adoption of this approach at the local and regional levels.
Alongside the presentation of the report in terms of Poles, Mr. CHAFIKI emphasized the importance of adopting a more comprehensive approach which can provide a better understanding of public policy.
For his part, Mr. Salem SEBBAR, manager of the Programme of the GSB- the Moroccan component at the UNIFEM, underlined the progress made in the Gender Report, while stressing the need to improve its standard in order to make it a ?model case? within the budgetary reform process.
In highlighting the continuing support of the UNIFEM, he also registered the effective contribution of other departments within the Ministry of Economy and Finance in implementing the programme of the GSB, and notably the Budget Department and the Department of General and Administrative Affairs. The latter has, alongside UNIFEM and other relevant sections of the department, begun work on the modelling of the Moroccan experience, with the aim of consolidating the achievements of the programme so far, and using it as a model internationally.
It should be noted that the workshop will run until March 27th ,2008 and will be led by Mrs. Nalini BURN, the foreign consultant supervising the GSB programme for the Ministry of Finance and the UNIFEM since 2002.
As an introduction to the workshop`s activities, Mrs. BURN addressed a range of questions and issues relating to GSB, its significance and necessity, as well as to the concept of gender and international standards. She also presented gender analysis methods, and the general GSB scheme.
The activities of this technical workshop, which is primarily an opportunity for information exchange between different sectors, will result in an assessment of the extent to which the gender approach is taken into account in sectorial budgets, and will identify the issues to be addressed in the 2009 Gender Report.