In August 2024, SUN countries in the Asia Hub that participated in the Asia Regional Workshop on Nutrition Financing held in Bangkok identified nutrition budget tracking as one of the key public financing issues they faced in the region. There is strong demand for updated and strengthened guidance on nutrition budget tracking. Consequently, this study aims to assess the current state of nutrition budget tracking across the eleven SUN countries in the Asia Hub within their respective PFM system. In particular, the assessment aims to take stock of nutrition budget tracking approaches currently used and capture successful practices, lessons learned, and challenges throughout the region, to generate recommendations that countries can use to improve their systems.
The learnings and experience sharing provided through this study presents countries with a practical frame of reference and a set of diagnostic elements that they can take forward to consider their own nutrition budget tracking approaches. The challenges and considerations highlighted by this study indicate that work must continue to update guidance to countries on nutrition budget tracking with ample dialogue across countries and technical partners to build consensus. This was validated by SUN countries at the recent SUN Asia Hub workshop where country delegations put forth a strong request to partners to come together to update the SUN guidance on budget analysis for nutrition. This updated guidance should assist countries to articulate their use case, provide a common definition of nutrition and taxonomy of investments and review and update guidelines on weighting of nutrition expenditure.
FCDP is a SUN Movement resource available to all 66 SUN Countries. The platform aims to transform the nutrition financing landscape by inspiring and igniting government leaders to elevate nutrition financing as a priority and accelerate impact across sectors.
