Public Expenditure Tracking Survey in Health 2000
Rwanda, 2000
Identification
RWA_2000_PETSH_v01_M
Public Expenditure Tracking Survey in Health 2000
| Name | Country code |
|---|---|
| Rwanda | RWA |
Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS)
A Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) is a diagnostic tool used to study the flow of public funds from the center to service providers. It has successfully been applied in many countries around the world where public accounting systems function poorly or provide unreliable information. The PETS has proven to be a useful tool to identify and quantify the leakage of funds. The PETS has also served as an analytical tool for understanding the causes underlying problems, so that informed policies can be developed. Finally, PETS results have successfully been used to improve transparency and accountability by supporting "power of information" campaigns.
PETS are often combined with Quantitative Service Delivery Surveys (QSDS) in order to obtain a more complete picture of the efficiency and equity of a public allocation system, activities at the provider level, as well as various agents involved in the process of service delivery.
While most of PETS and QSDS have been conducted in the health and education sectors, a few have also covered other sectors, such as justice, Early Childhood Programs, water, agriculture, and rural roads.
In the past decade, about 40 PETS and QSDS have been implemented in about 30 countries. While a large majority of these surveys have been conducted in Africa, which currently accounts for 66 percent of the total number of studies, PETS/QSDS have been implemented in all six regions of the World Bank (East Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa).
Since 1998, reviews of public expenditures in the social sector in Rwanda had provided the analytical basis for increasing budget allocations to social services. To supplement these largely “desk” exercises that relied largely on data from the Ministry of Finance and line ministries, it was decided to carry out a tracking survey of government expenditures on social services to determine the extent that funds reach the facilities that provide services to final consumers.
The Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) traced the flow of budgetary resources from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning to primary health centers and a sample of primary schools for 1998-1999. The study collected information on sources of income for the facilities, expenditures on basic services, and the practices of accountability at various levels. It also surveyed the administrators and facility heads about the problems they face, how these problems could be resolved, and the quality and impact of the delivery of public services.
The objective of the study was to assess, through the flow of funds, whether there were delays and leakages of budget transfers, and hence, to gain insights into the links between inputs and outcomes and the utilization and accounting for those resources. The findings from the study were intended to inform the formulation of reforms to improve the effectiveness of budget spending and the impact on the intended beneficiaries.
Documented here is the research conducted in Rwanda health sector in 2000. Eleven Regional Health Offices, 37 District Health Offices and 250 health centers were surveyed.
Sample survey data [ssd]
- Ministry of Health;
- Regional Health Offices;
- District Health Offices;
- Health centers.
Scope
| Topic | Vocabulary |
|---|---|
| Health | World Bank |
| Health Systems & Financing | World Bank |
Coverage
National
Producers and sponsors
| Name |
|---|
| Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning |
| Ministry of Health |
| World Bank |
| Department for International Development (DFID) |
| Name |
|---|
| World Bank |
| Department for International Development |
Sampling
The instrument for this assessment was a nation-wide survey of facilities and the relevant government offices and administrative services. In the health sector, the number of offices and health facilities was not very large; hence all the administrative and sub-administrative offices (11 Regional Health Offices (RHOs) and 40 District Health Offices (DHOs)) and all the 351 heads of health centers were surveyed. But interviewers were able to get complete responses only from 250 health facilities.
While all primary health care facilities were surveyed some could not respond to the full range of items in the questionnaire. This was not due to any reluctance to share information but rather to the lack of information. The response rate (the number of facilities that were able to answer all the questions as percent of all facilities) varied across administrative regions and over time. For 1998, it ranged from 39 percent in Ruhengeri to 85 percent in Kibuye and for 1999, from 60 percent in Kigali to 89 percent in Kibuye. The response rate was consistently higher across all administrative regions in 1999, with the national average increasing from 60 percent in 1998 to 75 percent in 1999.
Survey instrument
Six different questionnaires were designed to collect information on the flows of funds, the use of funds and the impact as perceived by service providers, at the provincial, district and facility levels in both the health and education sectors. At the facility levels, the school headmasters and heads of the health centers provided the information. The questionnaires were designed to collect statistics on each of the facilities surveyed. For the education sector, this included data for calculating dropout and progression rates, number of qualified staff, number of classrooms and children per classroom, and some measures of the quality of facilities. For the health sector, the data included: number of qualified staff, number of households serviced by health center, numbers of various standard equipment for medical and logistical purposes, and numbers of fee exemptions.
The survey also asked questions on compliance by administrative offices and facilities with any guidelines and procedures governing the use of funds, and good governance practices such as book keeping, financial management accounts, and record keeping. In addition, the survey sought the assessment of the challenges in the sectors by the local administrators and facility heads.
The survey data were complemented with statistics on education and health inputs and outcomes from the relevant ministries. Senior officials from Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health and the central bank - Banque Nationale du Rwanda (BNR) - were interviewed to obtain information on the flow of funds through their institutions. The flows were traced through all the nodes of the flow of funds except the commercial banks that naturally were unwilling to divulge to the public any available information on their clients' accounts.
Data collection
| Start | End |
|---|---|
| 2000 | 2000 |
-
PETS is not an audit of the public financial management system, rather it focuses on identifying areas of improvements in the efficiency of the administrative system. Hence, assessing whether the amount of funds appropriated actually reached intended beneficiaries was just as important as the objective of finding out whether the system in place consistently allowed for this amount to reach facilities in a predictable and timely manner, and was accounted for.
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In both the primary education and health, the budgetary allocations of the central government only paid the salaries of teachers and health workers; hence the facilities relied on household contributions and fees, and sporadic contributions from donors and NGOs.
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The Steering Committee of the PETS advised the survey team on technical issues related to sample design and selection procedures, content of the questionnaire and scope of the expenditure tracking study. Members of the Steering Committee included senior level staff from the Ministries of Finance, Education, and Health, and representatives from Department for International Development (DFID) and the World Bank.
Data Access
Public use file
The use of this survey must be acknowledged using a citation which would include:
- the identification of the Primary Investigator (including country name)
- the full title of the survey and its acronym (when available), and the year(s) of implementation
- the survey reference number
- the source and date of download (for datasets disseminated online).
Disclaimer and copyrights
The user of the data acknowledges that the original collector of the data, the authorized distributor of the data, and the relevant funding agency bear no responsibility for use of the data or for interpretations or inferences based upon such uses.
Contacts
| Name | Affiliation | |
|---|---|---|
| Hooman Dabidian | World Bank | hdabidian@worldbank.org |
| Cindy Audiguier | World Bank | caudiguier@worldbank.org |
Metadata production
DDI_RWA_2000_PETSH_v01_M
| Name | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Antonina Redko | DECDG, World Bank | DDI documentation |
2011-10-13
Metadata version
v01 (October 2011)