Prioritization Strategy for State-budget and EU-funded Investments, According to Harmonized Selection Criteria Pursuant to EU-funded Project

Romania faces today the critical need to
enhance the coordination of public investment programs and
projects in order to ‘do more with less,’ maximizing
development impact given limited financial resources
available. In this context, ‘value for money’ is the key
guiding principle of public investments, making this final
report is both critically important and timely. Romania’s
preparations for the 2014-2020 EU programming period are in
full swing, with multiple operational programs recently
approved. In parallel, the Government is working on
revamping instruments financed entirely from the state
budget. The core focus is on the National Local Development
Program (PNDL), the main state-budget-funded investment
program for local infrastructure development, though
findings and recommendations may be extrapolated to other
state-budget-funded instruments (e.g., the Environment Fund)
and, indeed, as decentralization and regionalization may
evolve in the future, subnational governments may also apply
the lessons of this work. The main goal of this work is to
recommend and facilitate the adoption of prioritization and
selection criteria that enhance coordination at the level of
infrastructure programs and the projects they finance.