same in terms of workload, but initially there were added burdens associated with implementing the reform programs.

The greatest burden was caused by the budget office’s reluctance to integrate the MTEF into their annual budget formulation process. The allocation of human resources within the Ministry of Planning Budget was skewed towards the budget office, with almost half of the ministry’s personnel allocated to the task of annual budget formulation. As a result, there were not enough personnel to handle new initiatives without the active participation of the budget office.

Line ministries were also not happy about the reformed budget process. They complained about their lack of power in ministerial budget formulation, because they expected greater autonomy in budget formulation below program level., but also said they were not ready to exercise increased autonomy in their own budget formation due to lack of capacity. Traditionally, the role of budget team in line ministries was limited to collecting budget requests from each department within their ministries.

Another line ministry complaint involved the organizational structure within the Ministry of Planning and Budget. At the time, the ministry was divided into three units: the Fiscal Planning Office, the Budget Office, and the Public Fund Bureau. Medium-term plans were handled by the Fiscal Planning Office, annual budgeting was dealt with by the Budget Office, and budgeting for public funds was done by the Public Fund Bureau, with very little coordination among the units. Therefore, line ministries had to communicate with each unit, repeatedly, about similar issues, to develop coherent MTEF and annual budgets. The budget office and line ministries would need to be brought on board, together, for the reform to work.

# _Coping with Implementation Challenges_

The MTEF process in 2003 and 2004 had been subject to trial and error mostly due to coordination and capacity issues within the extant central budget office and line ministries. Through these two years, it quickly became clear that MTEF would fail unless the budget office took an active role in making it an integral part of the budget process. A shifting of assignments made that active role imperative in 2005.

This time, the Budget Office and the Fiscal Planning Office maintained communication from the beginning, and the main responsibility of MTEF development was assigned to the central budget office. The Fiscal Planning Office still played a coordinating role but in a supporting capacity. In this way, the central budget office was left with no choice but to actively participate in the MTEF process and take responsibility.

Although MTEF was developed in 2003 and 2004, 2005 can be viewed as the first year that the annual budget was actually formulated based on MTEF. Another round of changes resulted in serious efforts toward integrating MTEF into the annual budget process. First, the annual budget process was changed to start in January, four months earlier than the previous budget process, which had started in May with accepting budget request from line ministries. Under the reformed system, line ministries were required to submit their medium-term plan for their programs at the beginning of the year. Based on the medium15