A seminar aimed at presenting the tools for the supervision and the launching of the programming of disbursements on Externally Funded Projects for the 2024-2026 period took place on 4 April 2023 in Yaounde, under the chairmanship of the Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, Alamine Ousmane Mey.
The seminar presented the newly developed methodological tools for externally financed projects, with a view to improving the performance of the project portfolio for the period 2024-2026. Alamine Ousmane Mey indicated that the interest of this workshop is mainly due to the proportion of external financing estimated at an average of 52% of the State’s public investment budget. He said this trend will be maintained in view of the great needs of the 2020 – 2030 National Development Strategy (NDS30) which calls for the structural transformation of Cameroon’s economy, hence the need for infrastructures. However, in a context where the state’s budgetary margins are narrow, this situation gives more meaning to the judicious and rigorous use of external financing instruments, with a view to effectively achieving Cameroon’s development priorities. With this in mind, three presentations were made to the participants.
The first was on the “Presentation of the conclusions of the External Resources Disbursement Programming Conference held in April 2022”. The second one was related to the “Presentation of the tools for the budgetary programming of externally financed projects: the debt plan reference framework and the guide for the elaboration of harmonising reports”. The third presentation was the “Presentation of the Decree N0. 2021/7341/PM of 13 October 2021 governing the creation, organisation and operation of development programmes and projects: “Stakes and Challenges”. In terms of figures, it was learnt that with regard to the structuring of the portfolio of external financing Projects, 182 projects were examined, for a total estimated cost of 10.064 billion CFA francs, 86% of which was covered by external financing and 14% by the State’s Counterpart Funds. Disbursements of external resources over the period 2023-2025 projected by the project coordinators amount to 2.813 billion CFA francs, for a ceiling of 2.517 billion CFA francs. The gap is 296 billion CFA francs. For the year 2023, the need is 1,045 billion CFA francs while the ceiling is 830 billion CFA francs, a gap of 215 billion CFA francs. Hence the need for a better rationalisation and prioritisation of projects to be submitted to external debt.
Regarding the issue of portfolio performance, one of the recommendations concerned its improvement, since the analysis of the “physical implementation/time consumption ratio” shows that only 10% of projects are being implemented according to their timetable, i.e. 15 projects out of 141 are currently underway. This situation is caused by various factors: insufficient budgeting of counterpart funds, long delays in mobilising funds for compensation procedures, etc.The Minister of the Economy thus recommended greater rigour in the selection and maturation of projects. According to Alamine Ousmane Mey, more use will have to be made of a legal framework for the tasks, performance and treatment of project management units.
At the end of this seminar, it was announced that the programming conferences of disbursements dedicated to externally financed projects for the 2024-2026 period will take place from 10 to 14 April 2023 at the Amphitheatre 300 of the main building of the Ministry of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development in Yaounde. For Minister Alamine Ousmane Mey, these various meetings are aimed at better planning, better programming, better prioritisation and better execution of development projects for the well-being of the people and the economy of Cameroon, in accordance with Cameroon’s Vision of Emergence driven by the President of the Republic H.E Paul BIYA.
