Burkina's economic and financial administrations have evolved over time, with the strengthening of the economic role and the public power of the State.

From an essentially domanial and cadastral administration and collection of taxes under colonization, the administration in charge of finances and the budget has become today an instrument of impetus of the economic, financial and budgetary policy, and of regulation of economic activity. It exercises in its attributions, the essential of the functions sovereign under the conduct of the Minister of the Economy and Finances.

The Department now has some 3500 public officials throughout the country, through its regional directorates, which exercise jurisdiction over three or four provinces on average.

The Ministry of Economy and Finance in its current configuration is the result of a regrouping of former ministerial departments in charge of financial resources, the Plan and Cooperation and Budget, and a more functional reorganization of services around three major economic functions:

• mobilizing internal and external financial resources to support development activities;
• the pursuit of sustainable economic development, by the. conduct of strategies and economic programs;
• the optimum distribution of the state's financial resources and the control of their use through the execution of the various financial laws.

In the execution of these missions, the efforts of the administration of the Economy and Finance have strained these last years, towards the conduct of structural reforms and towards a progressive liberalization of the economy, through a progressive disengagement of the State of the productive sectors.