Improving Health Budget Execution: Learning from Country Experience

Poor budget execution—money not spent or not spent in alignment with national health priorities—leaves resources allocated to the health sector unused or not used where they can bring most benefit. It therefore undermines the ability of ministries of health (MOHs) to increase service and population coverage. Improving budget execution can increase the impact and overall level of resources used for health and can potentially free up additional resources for health, as it is often a pre-condition for ministries of finance to increase budget allocations.

This report synthesizes learning from an in-depth examination of successful MOH efforts that have led to increased health budget execution. It offers a vision of good health budget execution, as well as promising practices in the areas of budget structure and processes and budget accountability.