Need to Rationalize and Reconstruct Public Administration

It is widely recognized both within the government and by the donor community that the current structure of public administration, including the large number of ministries relative to country size, and the quality of civil service leaves much to be reformed before they can start to function properly. An important step in the modernization of the civil service was the establishment of the Independent Administrative Reform and Civil Service Commission (IARCSC) in June 2002. The government presented in the 2003/04 National Development Budget a detailed short-term strategy for public administration and civil service reform.

The 2002/03-budget decree imposed headcount ceilings for each ministry’s civil service staff, while the compensation due to SOE employees was removed from the budgeted wage appropriations. On the other hand, the government adopted in July 2003 a decree introducing an interim additional salary allowance for key civil service personnel. This was developed into a Priority Reform and Restructuring (PRR) program, which enables government departments to transfer/appoint key staff in reformed units to higher salary scales. By the end of FY2003/04, 36 departments had been granted PRR status and about 3,000 civil servants were transferred to the PRR scales. For FY2004/05, a more ambitious target of 30,000 civil servants has been set, of which 20 percent will be at the provincial level. This PRR scheme was followed in December 2003 by a proportional increase in the base salary of civil servants excluding military, police and teachers who had previously received a separate pay increase. This increase ranged from 13 percent for the lowest grade to 130 percent for the highest grade, with an overall average increase of about 25 percent.¹⁸ On the other hand, efforts are being made to eliminate "ghost" workers from public payrolls.

The views expressed in this paper are the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), its Board of Directors, or the governments they represent. ADBI does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this paper and accepts no responsibility for any consequences of their use. Terminology used may not necessarily be consistent with ADB official terms.

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