Experience of a financial reforms project in Bangladesh

This article reviews the efforts of the Government of Bangladesh aimed at r eforming the public sector financial management system as part of overall p ublic administration reforms through a technical assistance project jointly sponsored by the government and the Department for International Developme nt, Government of the UK. It has evolved through initial setbacks into a hi ghly successful project delivering tangible outputs over the last three yea rs, with prospects for future extension until reforms are internalized and become self-sustaining. Attempts have been made in this article to analyse and evaluate the underlying reasons for the problems in the first year of i mplementation as well as the Factors that contributed to the recovery of th e image of the project and its continuing successes in successive phases. T he article highlights the lessons learned from the project in its bad as we ll as good times and suggests that this experience can be of great Value to those undergoing the same type of reform experiment. Copyright (C) 2000 Jo hn Wiley & Sons, Ltd.