Government Tasks Vote Holders On Budget Execution

By Godlove BAINKONG, Cameroon Tribune, 20-09-2013

National, regional, divisional and communal follow up committees have been created to ensure efficiency, celerity and transparency.

The government of Cameroon has taken the bull by the horns to bid farewell to the not-so-good execution of projects financed by the Public Investment Budget (PIB). A Prime Ministerial decree of September 13, 2013 creates follow up committees at national, regional, divisional and communal levels specifying their respective roles, with participatory and results-driven management as underlying principles.

The Committees

Placed under the auspices of the Minister in charge of public investment (Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, MINEAPT) the committees incorporate all and sundry along the public investment budget chain, giving specific tasks to each vote holder. The administration, legislature and civil society, will by the decree, work in synergy to right hitherto wrongs in PIB execution and give its projects a satisfactory execution rate.

Their Responsibilities

All the committees are to inform the population on the public investment projects in the localities for every given fiscal year. They are also to ensure the respect of projects contained in the project’s logbook by all vote holders, the respect of public contracts award programme as well as ensure the physical execution of programmed projects.

They are also to contribute to the drafting of performance reports and prepare up-to-date statistics on the execution of BIP for the evaluation of the performance of the State budget.  Appraising the level of satisfaction of beneficiaries of the projects as well as improving on the information of the civil society on the projects execution will not be the least of things to be done by the committees.

Their Composition

The national follow up committee is headed by the Chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee of the National Assembly assisted by a representative of the civil society. The Director General for Economy, Planning and Regional Development at MINEPAT will be the rapporteur.

There is also a technical sub-committee headed by the Director General of Economy, Planning and Public Investment at MINEPAT assisted by the Director General of Control of Public Contracts in the Ministry of Public Contracts. Regional committees will be headed by Members of Parliament. Meanwhile, at the Divisional level, a Member of Parliament will head the committee while a Mayor or his representative heads the technical communal committee.

Obligations

Reports emanating from the national committee on the physical and financial execution of the public investment projects are sent to the Prime Minister, MINEPAT, Minister of Public Contracts, Supreme State Audit and the National Anti-corruption Committee. Regional committees will send their reports to the national committee, divisional committees to the regional committees and communal committees to divisional committees.

National technical committees meet once every semestre while the national committee meets twice every year. Regional committees meet twice a year while their technical committees meet every quarter. Divisional committees and their technical committees meet every quarter meanwhile the communal committees need to hold four sessions per annum.

The decree specifies that representatives of civil society organisations are people with unquestionable integrity selected from respectable and recognised trade unions. The work of the officials of the committees is gratis but their transportation to and from sessions could be refunded.