Public Security uses less than 30 percent of 2017 budget allocation

Sep 18, 2017 News

…Minister says execution rate will ‘jump high’ in a few weeks

At the end of June 30, last, several ministries were yet to spend even 30 percent of their 2017 budgetary allocations. One such Ministry caught in this predicament is the Ministry of Public Security, which was allocated $2.4B, but only used $631M, an execution rate of 25 percent.
According to Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan, this situation is expected to improve before the reading of the 2018 budget in November.
Ramjattan said that the reason for the sloth in spending is an important one to be considered as the Ministry found itself experiencing troubles with the procurement process which started late in spite of the budget coming out early.
The Minister said that there were a number of other reasons which include more or less, not getting work done quickly enough at that ministerial level.
“…Now I understand that we are going to spend all of our monies before the year is finished because of the fact that almost all the contracts are now out and have been in the process of completing evaluation with the Tender Board.”
At the level of Cabinet, Minister Ramjattan noted that there was the grant for the rehabilitation of a number of police stations, the rehabilitation of the forensic laboratory along with a number of other projects. He said that these will be fast tracked. So that 25 percent will jump high in a couple of weeks’ time to probably more than 50 percent because the contracts are now being awarded. We want to spend the monies out this year rather than having it rolled over.”

Public Security Minister, Khemraj Ramjattan

The rate of implementation of projects was also highlighted in the half year report of the Ministry of Finance.
According to the Ministry, the Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP), which is financed by both local and foreign funded sources, expended $15.8 billion during the first half of 2017, reflecting a 19.8 percent increase over the first half of 2016.
Finance Ministry officials said however that this represents only 27.9 percent of the PSIP’s budgeted allocation of $56.8 billion.
It was noted that the locally-funded projects were primarily constrained by delays in the project implementation as a result of a dearth of procurement planning, apparent lack of capacity, and delays in the tender process.
The Ministry noted that this resulted in only 26.8 percent of the budgetary allocation of $34.6 billion expended at half year. The implementation of the foreign-funded projects was also plagued by delays emanating from the late finalisation of a number of financing agreements with both multilateral and bilateral development partners and the subsequent setting up of the project implementation unit.
As such, the Finance Ministry noted that a mere 29.6 percent of the budgeted sum of $22.1 billion of the foreign-funded portfolio was expended. In the first half of 2017, the amounts expended for major projects including the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA) Expansion Project, the Power Utility Upgrading Programme, and the West Coast Demerara Highway Project, were $2.8 billion, $1.2 billion, and $0.6 billion, respectively.
In spite of these constraints, Government said that it remains committed to delivering the budgeted PSIP and has taken steps towards the improvement of the pace of implementation. These include increased monitoring, the introduction of a Cabinet level reporting mechanism in June 2017, and training Ministry officials from key sectors in procurement planning.
Further, in an effort to attract more persons to the national pool of evaluators, a stipend of $3,000 per session was approved by Cabinet, for each evaluator. In addition, monthly stipends were introduced for members of the Ministerial, Regional, Departmental, and Agency Tender Boards.
At the end of June 30, 2017, there were a number of ministries which were below the 30 percent margin regarding their rate of implementation. The Ministry of Social Protection, for example, had a budgetary allocation of $477M but up to June, last, it had only used up $81M. This represents an execution rate of 17 percent.