Knesset
Photo: Gabi Menashe
The Knesset is set to host a conference on Monday of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to discuss transparency and public supervision of government budgets.
The-two-day conference is part of the sixth annual meeting of OECD Parliamentary Budget Officials (PBO), which began Sunday. The PBO offers professional staff working on budgetary research and planning a chance to meet and exchange ideas with their counterparts in foreign parliaments.
This will be the first OECD conference held at the Knesset, with 70 representatives attending from 29 parliaments across the globe. Even officials from Turkey's Finance Ministry have confirmed their participation, a sign of the thawing relations between Jerusalem and Ankara.
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Academics from around the world are expected to attend the meeting and conference, as are representatives from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The conference-goers will discuss issues including the visible and hidden costs of certain pieces of legislation – such as those pertaining to public debt and budget deficits – and the public supervision of parliamentary budgeting.
The initiative for hosting the conference came from the Knesset's Department for Budgetary Supervision, which was established within the Research and Information Center in 2007 with the purpose of giving parliamentarians all the necessary fiscal tools to assist in their supervision of the budget.
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, the keynote speaker at the conference, said "the participation of Knesset employees in international professional forums allows them to learn about the developments in the world and use this knowledge to routinely assist the Knesset members and support the Knesset's work."