This chapter captures some of the Public Investment Management (PIM) lessons and experiences
from Timor-Leste as it tried to meet urgent infrastructure demands in a post-conflict environment,
which benefited from a surge in petroleum receipts. It looks at institutional changes using standard
features of Public Investment Management systems starting from the immediate postindependence
period in 1999 right up to the launch of Timor-Leste’s Strategic Development Plan in
July 2011. Increased control over domestic resources over this period, thanks to the onset of
natural resource rents, gave the government more autonomy over prioritization and management
of capital expenditure. It also enabled use of the Capital Budget to pursue multiple objectives
including consolidating social stability, stimulating economic activity outside Dili, delivering quick
results to address urgent infrastructure needs, and growth of the domestic private sector. The
chapter tries to highlight some of the trade-offs that the PIM system faced in trying to meet these
different objectives. It finally looks at some of the institutional reforms that the government
embarked on in 2011 when the focus was shifting to large investments for long-term growth. This
included centralizing selected PIM functions for large projects and decentralizing those functions
for smaller projects.