By DOH JAMES SONKEY
Members of the National Follow Up Committee for the Physical and Financial Execution of Public Investment have adopted strategies to ameliorate the execution performance of the Public Investment Budget, PIB in 2018.
The resolution was unanimously taken last February 5, 2018 at Amphi 300 of the Ministry of Economy, Planning and Regional Development in Yaounde at the end of the 2nd session for 2017 chaired by their President, Hon Moty Ayayi Rosette.
Some of the difficulties encountered during the 2017 PIB execution which members promised to work on include; weak execution of road maintenance projects, poorly executed projects, non-conformity of certain projects earmarked in PIB etc.
In his presentation, the Director General of Economy, Planning and Public Investment at the Ministry of Economy, Isaac Tamba disclosed that the global physical realization of PIB in 2017 is 91.95% all over the country representing a 4 points drop as compared to 95.94% in 2016. He explained that during their first evaluation session in August 2017, the execution rate stood at 52.83% with a liquidation rate of 66.90% and an engagement rate of 69.86%.
The national classification puts the Adamawa region on the top with an execution rate of 96%, followed closely by the North West Region at the second position with 90%.
The President of the National Committee, Hon Rosette Ayayi Moty Mbo told reporters that “despite the little drop we noticed in 2017 as compared to the year 2016, we still think that PIB was executed in a good manner. As certain entrepreneurs have often underlined, problems linked to the payment of some credits continue to be a major obstacle to the execution. Each region equally has its difficulties.”
Quizzed to know what must have pushed the North West Region that came first in 2016 to occupy the second position in the 2017 PIB execution, the NW Regional Vice President for the Follow Up of Public Investments, Regina Mundi told The SUN that “we had some three road maintenance projects in the town of Bamenda that amounted to FCFA 2 billion which have just been awarded and I don’t even know if they have taken off. When the award of such a big amount contract is delayed, it helped to bring down our overall performance. In addition to this, some special credits came very late so we just could not handle them. But all these projects are underway now as the contracts have all been awarded and execution will start soon. The only problem now is that we have some 2017 projects executed in 2018.”