Twinning Poland “Local Government Budget Management System”. The Final Conference Concluded Successfully

On February 17th 2009 in Warsaw, the final conference of the Twinning project “Local Government Budget Management System” in which the representatives of the Italian partnership and some of the key experts of the project activities took part, was held.
Emilio Lolli, Business Director of the Italian Embassy in Warsaw and Dariusa Daniluk, Sub-secretary of the Ministry of Finance, took the floor. The officials from the Departments of the Polish Ministry of Finance who participated in the activities during the phase of project implementation, attended the event together with the Polish Project Manager Tomasz  Zakrzewski and the Project Leader Marianna Borowska. Tomasz  Zakrzewski and Pasquale Russiello, Resident Twinning Advisor, outlined the activities carried out during the 16 month-implementation and underlined the high-profile results in the scope of each component.
Furthermore, the Twinning tool resulted in being of key importance for the sharing of theoretical experiences as well as for practical experiences. In particular, several project themes were identified in fieri, owing to the constant exchange of observations and information among the Polish officials, the Resident Twinning Advisor and the experts involved.
With regard to the financial section, Anthony Jennings outlined the positive results of the project and highlighted that the project total budget was used up to over 90% with the achievement of the results forecasted at the start-up of the activities.
The key strength of the meeting was the friendly atmosphere and the fulfilment demonstrated in the morning session. The Polish counterpart emphasized the commitment and devotion as well as the technical competence demonstrated by the Italian staff, while Pasquale Russiello played the role of spokesman of all participants by declaring that if the results achieved have been so positive, this has been a consequence of the outstanding collaboration established with Poland.
Dariusz Daniluk, Sub-secretary of the Polish Ministry of Finance, highlighted that the project has contributed toward improving the financial budgeting of local entities to the ministry and has encouraged efficiency, control and transparency of Polish public finance. This has led to the definition of some of the indexes, namely improved monitoring, increased capacity of analysis of the entities income and improved informatization of the financial management systems of local administrations.
Mr Emilio Lolli, representative of the Italian Embassy, was also impressed by the success and the interest risen by the project and expressed his intention to pursue and intensify the collaboration between Italy and Poland. Finally, he drew the attention to the Italian-Polish inter-governmental summit which will be held in Warsaw in April 28th 2009 and to which the two Ministries of Finance have been invited.