Planning and budgeting in Southern Sudan: starting from scratch

What factors are needed for successful budget reforms after conflicts? Experience in Southern Sudan can shed light on this crucial issue. Since its creation in 2005, the Government of Southern Sudan has had real success in developing integrated systems for planning and budget preparation. These systems have been built from scratch, against the backdrop of practices that existed both before and during the conflict. Two factors, in particular, have influenced this success: Strong technical leadership from an integrated Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, responsible for planning, budgeting and aid coordination; and System development that was tailored to this specific context, with incremental improvements aligned to development in local capacity. International technical assistance (TA) played a more mixed role - positive when focusing on the development of context-appropriate systems, negative when trying to introduce systems that exceeded local capacity to manage them.