The Ministry of Finance published recently the Municipality Budget Circular 2015/1 and Budget Circular 2014/1 – preliminary preparations and initial ceilings of the Budget 2015 from Central Budget Organizations. Meetings between the Ministry of Finance, Kosova Women’s Network (KWN) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH paid off; for the first time, the Ministry decided to include reference to gender responsive budgeting within the Budget Circulars.
The Municipality Budget Circular 2015/1 expresses the need to work on Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) based on international practices. GRB helps make visible the effects of public expenditures on the equality of women and men, boys and girls. This can contribute to the effectiveness and transparency of public finance management. The Circular expresses intent to extend GRB into other municipalities in the Republic of Kosovo based on a pilot project currently underway in the Municipality of Kamenica. The Circular encourages municipalities to begin to reflect gender sensitivity in their budgets.
The Budget Circular 2014/1 reflects preliminary preparations and initial ceilings of the 2015 Budget for Central Budget Organizations, including more detail on GRB. Circular 2014/1 encourages increased effectiveness and transparency of public spending by providing more specific performance indicators. The circular suggests disaggregating indicators and measuring by gender wherever meaningful and possible, explaining that such indicators are IIF and EC requirements for measuring overall performance of the budget process.
