Profile of the Deputy Minister for Budget and Development Planning

Tanneh Geraldine Brunson, Deputy Minister for Budget and Development Planning, Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, Republic of Liberia. She is responsible for preparing the framework and implementation of the National Budget and providing guidance and support in preparing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating development plans, programs and projects. She brings to the job, significant experience in public financial management including the budget development and management policies, coordinating with all sectors, as well as, development partners on translating government plans into reality.

Career Highlights
She’s currently leading a reform that seeks to promote gender equity and inclusive participation of vulnerable groups in the national development process .The Government’s focus is to make the public financial reforms and in particular, Gender Responsive Budgeting a tool for contributing towards inclusive growth. The aim is to ensure that allocation and expenditure of public finances are done in a gender responsive manner so that budget becomes a redistributive means to address entrenched gender-specific inequalities. To that effect she has galvanized general consensus for integrating the gender responsive budgeting (GRPB) process as part of the overall public financial reforms initiative.

As Deputy Minister for Budget and Development Planning, she alone with her technical team was able to lead on the institutionalization of Decentralization at the county level. This framework is a mechanism to ensure budgetary and financial management processes are implemented in the local government structure. As the result of these engagements, county service centers are now setup in all fifteen counties.

Later, as Coordinator of the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) Secretariat, she coordinated the establishment and management of a new MTFE budget process and redirected resources to ensure that the budget serves as a key policy tool to implement Government’s economic and development priorities.
She gained valuable experience working in the public sector (human services) for fifteen years in several management positions, including Department of Health and Human Resources for the Montgomery County Government and the Government of the State of Maryland, USA. There, she evaluated Federal, State and Local Governments subsidy program operations to assess integrity and quality, formulated policies, interpreted regulations and procedures for implementation.

Since her return to Liberia in 2009, she has played a key role in the government’s public financial management reform initiatives. She was assigned at the Ministry of Finance, where she provided guidance on the development and implementation processes of the annual budget; directed and managed analysis of budget information to respond to internal and external queries and provided critical information to senior decision-makers, consistent with government’s priorities and financial resources.

Education
Upon graduation from high school at the College of West Africa, she matriculated to the University of Liberia where she obtained a Bachelor of Business Administration Degree in Management (1979). She furthered her studies with a Master of Arts Degree in Economics (1989) from the Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia.

Personal Information
Tanneh was born in Monrovia, Liberia. She is married and blessed with three children and two grandchildren.