Hello dear participant !

Welcome to our training workshop on drawing up and updating commitment plans.

In this section 14, we will analyze the ‘Finance controller’s sustainability opinion on the initial Sectoral Commitment Plan’.

Section 70 paragraph 5 of the RFE-AEP stipulates that: “the Finance controller shall give an opinion on the sincere and sustainable nature of expenditure commitment plans”.

Once the initial Sectoral commitment plan has been drawn up, it must be sent to the Finance controller for his opinion.

The Finance controller’s opinion, which takes the form of a letter or report, is not binding on the authorizing officer. A copy of this opinion is sent to the Minister of Finance at the same time as the initial sectoral commitment plan.

The Finance Controller’s opinion is based on an examination of:

• – forecast documents for current and capital expenditure by programme and by action in terms of Commitment Authorisation (CA) and Payment Appropriation (PA);
• – the Annual Work Plan (AWP);
• – the budget execution statements for the last three years;
• – the Annual Performance Reports (APR) for the last three years;
• – the Simplified Procurement Plans (SPP) and the Procurement Plans (PP) for the last three years;
• – Simplified Commitment Plans (SCP) for previous years.
• – forecasts of personnel and job allocations by programme and action, including a forecast of staff arrivals and departures, the resulting headcount, and trends in salaries and other remuneration components, as well as social security charges.

In operational terms, the examination of the sincerity of the SCP consists of verifying:

• – the sincerity and exhaustiveness of the non-tax revenue forecasts;
• – the sincerity and exhaustiveness of the expenditure forecasts;
• – the coverage of compulsory and unavoidable expenditure;
• – the multi-year impact of the budget proposals

The finance controller’s sustainability opinion accompanies the initial SCP, which will be forwarded to the Directorate General of the Budget.

From this sequence, you should note that the initial Sectoral Commitment Plan is sent to the Finance Controller for an opinion on the sincerity and sustainability of the expenditure. This opinion forms an integral part of the elements transmitted to the DGB, in the same way as the explanatory note.