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Cabinet to closely monitor implementation of Public Sector Improvement Programme
By Murtland Haley
Minister of State, Joseph Harmon
Following the presentation of a half-year report under the Public Sector Improvement Programme (PSIP), Cabinet agreed to closely monitor the implementation of the PSIP.
Minister of State, Joseph Harmon said yesterday during the Post Cabinet press conference that the Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan, had provided an extended Cabinet with a report on spending under the PSIP for the first half of 2017.
According to Harmon, that meeting included all Ministers and Ministers within ministries, along with the respective permanent secretaries. He said that the PSIP with an allocation of $56.75B for 2017 is the main mechanism for government’s capital spending.
He said that the report indicated that capital spending had been very slow in the initial months of 2017 but it improved significantly towards the end of the first half of the year.
“Cabinet was informed about the issues that hindered the implementation of projects under the PSIP and discussed ways and means of assisting the budget agencies through their performance in relation to capital spending. Cabinet also indicated its intention to closely monitor the implementation of the PSIP.”
The Minister of State informed the media that the permanent secretaries that attended the Cabinet meeting expressed appreciation for Cabinet’s intervention and assured Cabinet that the bulk of the PSIP spending and projects for the year will be implemented.
When asked about what were some of the issues that hindered the implementation of the PSIP, Harmon said among the issues highlighted was the unfamiliarity with the procurement system by some of the permanent secretaries in the ministries.
“Additionally, what they had to do was come to grips with the fact that VAT was actually being charged on some of government services, therefore when the initial contracts were awarded, they did not include that, so that amounted for some amount of delay.”
Harmon recalled that in previous years there was a lot written about the way contracts were awarded and a lot of criticism about it. He said that the procurement entities have been very careful now in checking such things, which was responsible for slowing-up the implementation. However, the Minister said that the situation is much better.
He added that some of the things considered were that in the Ministries there was a recommendation that Project Management Officers will be attached to the ministries.
Harmon said that this measure is having an effect already, because some of the ministries already have some of the officers while others don’t. According to Harmon, for Ministries that don’t have these officers, the Ministry of Finance will be assisting these agencies to have officers in their ministries to be able to push the paperwork in those ministries.
“We also believe that the better streamlining of the procurement process from the time that a contract is awarded, up to the time that the mobilisation is given to the contract and he starts work. What we are trying to do is to narrow that gap so that things can happen at a faster pace.”
Recently, in May of this year, the lack of critical skills had been blamed for the lowly implementation rate of the PSIP which stood at 20 per cent at that time. Minister Jordan had said that the administration would like to see more work done. He called on retired public and private servants to become evaluators to assist in the implementation of the PSIP.
Jordan said that his government would like to broaden the pool of evaluators.
“We can do some quick training on them so that they can come and help us evaluate. We have a lot of in-breeding of the evaluation going on right now because the pool is very small, but we would like to broaden this pool.”
Jordan had explained that the slow implementation of the PSIP has an adverse impact on economic growth. He said that persons look to government spending as a stimulus. He said that although the money would have been approved, the problem lies in getting it out into the system so that the funds can be multiplied.
He had said that the government had plans to re-establish a central planning unit that will be assisted by intervention from the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) which would revamp the tendering process to accelerate the execution of projects.
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