Stakeholders met in Yaounde yesterday to review the exercise and seek ways of accelerating it.

The Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, MINEPAT, Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi has expressed dissatisfaction with the non-respect by some ministries of the circular of the Minister of Finance obliging them to complete commitments to subventions and counterpart funds latest 28 February 2015. Experts of the Ministry of the Economy say this is playing down on the smooth and speedy execution of the 2015 Public Investment Budget, PIB.

It was in a bid to reverse this trend that the Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development gathered officials of ministries charged with the execution of the Public Investment Budget, in Yaounde on June 10,2015 to identify challenges pulling their legs behind with the hope of stepping up the level of the execution. Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi revealed that the 2015 PIB was executed at 44.8 per cent, one month to the end of the first quarter. The performance is appreciable in some ministries, but mind-boggling in others. He said “the performance rate is acceptable, but insufficient”.

Presentations from other ministries brought to the fore the fact that some loans for 2015 PIB were still pending. The Director of the Department of Economy and Programming of Public Investments, Dieudonné Bondoma Yokono, after listening to some of the officials from ministries observed that they were yet to respect commitments on subventions and counterpart funds in partnership with funding partners. Some of the ministries revealed that all procedures for the award of contracts were ready with the field implementation of the PIB imminent.

Efforts such as the production and publication of the 2015 project logbook in 2014, the organisation and programming of conferences in December 2014, the national launch of the execution of the budget in January 2015 and the production by MINEPAT of a guide on “Understanding how to Better Execute the 2015 PIB”, among other things are still to bear desired fruit. Notwithstanding, “all parties must put hands on deck to speed up the rate of execution of the PIB to 85 per cent in the next two months,” Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi stressed.