On 28^th November around 100 representatives of more than 30 Cambodian Higher Education Institutions attended the first BALANCE National Conference titled “Trends in Financial Management of Universities: reflecting on current status and potential improvements. European and Cambodian perspectives”, which took place at the Royal university of Phnom Penh in Cambodia capital. The event was organized in the framework of the BALANCE  project, co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, which contributes to strengthen financial autonomy and accountability of HEIs in Cambodia via modernisation of financial management practices and legal framework.

The conference has been opened by the rector of the University of Alicante, Manuel Palomar and the academic director of Institutional Projects, Joaquín Marhuenda. Experts from the University of Genoa presented the results of the BALANCE Need Analysis that has been conducted in the last months and the project coordinator University of Alicante discussed relevant topics related with the Financial Management and funding in Higher Education.

During the event the Ministry of Education Youth and Sport mediate a roundtable that has been a great opportunity to have a deep look at the current financial management challenges that interested the Cambodian universities the most. This roundtable laid the foundation for the drafting of BALANCE White Paper, which aims to have an impact at Institutional and National levels. In the previous days, 42 members from the BALANCE project participated also to the first project Workshop on Financial Management, which have been attended by representatives of the World Bank project “Cambodia Higher Education Improvement Project” too. BALANCE Partners were also able to celebrate a project meeting in order to orientate project action in the following months.