2020-2022 State Budget:Gov’t Validates Projected Medium Term Expenditure

The Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, Alamine Ousmane Mey has challenged stakeholders to put hands on deck to increase the sources of financing for the 2020 state budget, by securing a more inclusive growth.

Minister Alamine Ousmane Mey was speaking in Yaounde last week as he led a forum to review and validate the 2020-2022 medium term expenditure framework for the different ministries. Speaking at the event, the minister said their actions are backed by firm instructions from the Head of State, President Paul Biya.

 He said this would reform the state’s public finance management. These different stages to establish the 2020 state budget, come as a result of the laws that were signed in 2016 and 2017 to guarantee transparency good governance and effective management.

In his words, the Minister said “this is just to make our economy a strong and veritable one, based on very strong governance principles. It is about better planning, better programming and better follow up of the previewed activities.”

The stakeholders from the different ministries were challanged to rise to expectation and come up with clear activities that should help get the nation closer to vision 2035.  Participants at the forum also reviewed the three-year action plan, focusing on expenditure and revenue.

In this forum, they went beyond just doing a budget that is rich in quality but setting up the different indicators that would help track the progress. Participants at the forum were urged to focus on the result based management principles as they work on their different ministry budgets.

The rigorous nature in which this state budget has been worked on, would go a long way to stabilise and consolidate the 2020 public investment budget, experts say. The 2020-2022 state budget review and validation were closely followed by two other enlarged meetings geared towards refining and sanitising the budget.

 According to the General Manager of the Technical Studies at the Ministry of Public Works, Mr Guy Daniel Abouna Zoa, the priority of this budget goes beyond medium term expenditure as they target to tar at least 3500 Km of the road network. As part of this budget’s peculiarities, the director added that they also target to have at least 340 meters of tarred roads for every 1000 inhabitants in the country. They would also want to complete all ongoing state projects within the stated deadlines.

 If approved by the National Assembly, the Ministry of Public Works would have 1500 Billion CFAF in this triennial budget. The assiduity observed around these years’ budget proposal is expected to curb late or non-delivery of projects, render the private sector more dynamic, reassure economic diversity and above all improve governance, so the common man can be impacted.