GOVERNMENT is taking critical steps to accelerate the pace at with which public sector investments are executed with the recruitment of a chief planning officer and the creation of a national planning unit.
Currently, only 20 per cent of the country’s Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP) has been implemented for 2017 – a situation which Minister of Finance Winston Jordan said leaves much to be desired.
The Finance Minister pointed out that the Agriculture, Health, Education, Infrastructure and the Communities sectors account for the “bulk” of the $250B budget. However, the execution of projects and programmes in these sectors are stymied because of the lack of critical skills needed for implementation.
It was noted that the slow rate of implementation affects the economy and by extension the people of the country. “It affects economic growth, because in the economy that wants a stimulus it is government spending people look to. We have the monies voted. The issue is to get it out into the system, so that dollar can continue making an extra dollar,” he posited.
After two years of introducing early budgets, the Finance Minister said Government is faced with the sad reality that Government workers, particularly those critically involved in the execution of projects and programmes, have still not gotten used to the new system. The national budget is now being presented in November and approved by December ahead of the fiscal year.
“So you would think that the period between October and December, they would use for, let’s say pre-tendering, getting…and stop short of awarding of contracts until the budget has been passed,” Minister Jordan pointed out.
“The budget gets presented in November, passed in December and still by January you still cannot see the paper flooded with advertisements pertaining to contract works,” he said with a sense of disappointment.
Cognizant of the systemic problems, Minister Jordan said government is moving with haste to address them. He disclosed that the administration will be hiring a chief planning officer. That officer has been identified and is expected to take up his post by July, 2017.
Additionally, a national planning institution will be re-established with assistance from the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB). “With this planning institution, we are hoping that, just like in Jamaica, we can have some kind of central projects body, so that it doesn’t impose these undue demands when you go at these little unit levels,” he explained.