FINANCE IN EAST TIMOR

The Finance team arrived in East Timor in May 2000 to provide technical assistance to the East Timor Central Fiscal Authority. Apart from the day-to-day transfer of knowledge and capacity building activity, Finance staff in East Timor also designed a four-week Introduction to Public Finance course, known as 'Budget School', for East Timorese civil servants.

Our aim was to enable the East Timorese Administration to deliver its own budgets in the future, and to see our people benefit from this experience and bring that learning back to the Department.

Finance staff were charged with both training the East Timorese civil servants, and assisting them in the preparation of a working budget. Portable classrooms acting as makeshift offices with temperatures peaking at 35 degrees celcius and working on laptop computers that experienced frequent power-cuts were typical of a day in the Dili office.

The work in East Timor will continue, with further training being developed in conjunction with the United Nations and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to further facilitate the transfer of skills.

To further assist the people of East Timor the Department has identified over 500 books on construction and engineering within its library collection which will be donated to the East Timor National University.