…to help speed up budgetary spending

THE capacity of the National Procurement and Tender Administration (NPTA) will be enhanced amid concerns over the pace at which the budget is being expended. Reports indicate that less than 50 per cent of the 2016 National Budget has thus far been expended. Speaking on the issue on Wednesday, President Granger said his Government has taken note of the situation and has underscored the importance of establishing planning units across ministries, and boosting the capacity of the NPTA ahead of the 2017 National Budget.
In offering his justification, the President pointed out that the 15 Government ministries all utilize the services of the single board.
“The board obviously needs to be expanded or given the capability to remove the bottleneck. There is a bottleneck, it is not a question of administrative or governmental incompetence, there is a bottleneck,” President Granger said.
He noted that the Government is solving the problem in two parts. “One, we are establishing the planning units and two, broadening the National Procurement and Tender Administration.” The President said Government is also moving ahead with the Public Procurement Commission (PPC).
As such, he believes that by the end of the year, the process will be accelerated.
However, he is maintaining that at this stage it is a matter of planning and not incompetence on the part of the executing bodies. “There needs to be more careful planning, so that the budgetary allocations could be spent in a timely manner. It is a question of planning; there is no incompetence or inefficiency,” President Granger said.
In a recent interview with this newspaper, Finance Minister Winston Jordan described the situation as “unfavourable.”
He too emphasized the need to have the Public Procurement Tender Board strengthened along with other agencies. “For instance, we are already speeding up the process with the Public Tender Board. We are strengthening agencies and evaluating implementation processes,” he explained.
Among other considerations contributing to failure of the system, the Finance Minister said, was “so-called interference,” which is being removed. He singled out Region Six to state that while months of controversy had existed there, and blame for sloth had been thrown on the Regional Executive Officer (REO), the failure has been recognized as having to do with slow implementation systems in the region.
Minister Jordan also believes that some agencies “May have been caught off guard with an early 2016 budget.” He opined that some agencies were “so accustomed to being relaxed and lackadaisical (in their approach to getting things done) that they were surprised by the early budget and were unable to get their footing.”
Months past Government’s first year in office, its officials are still trying to fix a lot of what is wrong with the system it inherited from the previous administration. Minister Jordan declared: “Yes, it is embarrassing” to have spent such a meagre percentage of what has been budgeted for development so far into the year. However, he said increases in public sector wages, granted within the last couple of days, should take the Government a further $50B into the budget.