PETS - Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys

What is a Public Expenditure Tracking Survey?

in theory

in practice

PETS in theory

A PETS tracks the flow of public funds and material resources from the central government level, through the administrative hierarchy, and out to the frontline service providers.

The key question that a PETS sets out to answer is:

1. Do public funds and material resources end up where they were supposed to?

...but if they don't, a PETS may also go further and ask:

2. Why are funds diverted?

The first question is referred to as the diagnostic part of a PETS. This part consists in identifying the actual flows of public funds in a program or a sector and establishes to what extent public funds and other resources reach the service providers, that is, the schools, teachers, health facilities and health staff. A discrepancy between the amount of funds disbursed from the central level and the amount of funds received by the service provider is referred to as leakage.

The presence of leakage implies that some of the funds in this program or sector have not been spent according to the government policy, that is, some of the funds have been captured at some level in the administrative hierarchy, for example the district or regional administration. It has been beyond the scope of most PETS to study how captured funds have been spent and to what extent a leakage reflects corruption in the system.

The second question is referred to as the analytic part of a PETS, where the aim is to explain why leakage is observed. Why is there more leakage in some districts than others? Why do some schools receive more of their entitlements than other schools? By studying variation in characteristics between different parts of the administrative structures and different service providers, a PETS may contribute with knowledge about how to reduce leakage and improve the performance of the system.

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PETS in practice

PETS vary greatly in content, such as

• the type of expenditures tracked
  
• the number of levels of public administration studied
  
• the sectors analysed
  
• the degree to which explanation is sought for the observed patterns in resource flows

PETS vary greatly in quality (e.g., data quality, sample size). Some, but not all, PETS are conducted on large, representative samples. A minimum requirement in order to qualify as a PETS is that resource flows are tracked at least at two different levels of public administration. Not all studies that are announced as PETS satisfy this criterion. Therefore, this page does not attempt to provide a complete overview of all PETS conducted, but rather focus on some of the more successful ones.

PETS is typically implemented at the sector level. Almost all existing PETS track resource flows either in the education sector, in the health sector, or both. There are fewer examples of successful PETS in the health sector than in the education sector. Attempts at conducting PETS in the health sector have been seriously hampered by unreliable and inconsistent budgets and/or little systematic information on financial flows at facility level (e.g., Mozambique, Honduras, Uganda).

PETS are conducted in order to improve the quality of service delivery at the local level. In order to analyse how resources made available to frontline service providers are transformed into services for the end users, a PETS is often complemented by a Quantitative Service Delivery Survey (QSDS).