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The Solomon Islands Government through the Ministry of Finance & Treasury (MoFT) in partnership with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) under the Japan's Technical Cooperation had successfully concluded the second training workshop on economic and financial analysis of public investment in February 2023.

During the on-site mission in January through February 2023, a three-day training workshop was held for the participants from MoFT, the Ministry of Infrastructure Development (MID), and the Ministry of National Planning & Development Coordination (MNPDC). During this second training workshop, a greater emphasis was placed on the case study to apply the knowledge base from the previous training to four actual cases, completed and ongoing projects from various sectors; aviation, energy, water supply and transport, were studied.

Given it is likely to take some more time until the actual calculation results on the templates for financial / economic analysis become available from the line ministries, the training focused more on the use of the Quick Check List for summarizing the analysis results for donor-funded projects proposals, which has a greater possibility of the immediate use at the ministries which review the proposal documents.

Through reviewing each cases in about a half-day, specific procedures and techniques for the efficient ‘critical reading' of the proposals have been transferred to the participants. More specifically, the participants learned how to 1) find the relevant indicators quickly, 2) capture the nature of the proposals through identifying the distinctions between ‘economic' and ‘financial' analyses, ‘with a project' and ‘without project' cases, etc., and 3) identifying the missing data items necessary for reproducing the calculation results.

At the end of the training workshop and the overall on-site schedule, comments from the participating three ministries were collected regarding what to do for the next round of visit. For the collective training, more case studies were requested from different perspectives such as how to quantify environmental impacts as a part of economic analysis. Also, it was discussed with the Investment Analysis Unit, MoFT that the focus shall now be shifted to the use of the economic / financial analyses in the actual context, while similar interest has been shown by MID as well.

Speaking upon completing the training workshop, Mr Tobais Bule, the Director of Investment Analysis Unit, commented that this second training provides participants with in-depth economic and financial analysis of project proposals in Solomon Islands. The hands-on exercises and the application of the Quick Check List provides better understand of the concepts and framework on improving efficiency of Public Investment Management (PIM). "The three day training workshop is an added value and provide participants with most needed skills and knowledge on conducting project proposal analysis", he added.

In acknowledging the support and training facilitators, Mr Bule conveyed the Ministry of Finance and Treasury appreciation and continuous partnership with JICA and looking forward to the next phase of the program, which is the development of relevant PIM Guidelines.