MONEY»
10th Nepal Portfolio Performance Review
- NPPR to discuss donor concerns
KATHMANDU, AUG 24 -
The 10th Nepal Portfolio Performance Review (NPPR) will discuss concerns of donors regarding development projects funded by them. The donors are irked at the frequent transfer of civil servants from projects they have funded because they feel such shuffles delay completion of projects.
The World Bank, among the biggest donors, had threatened to withdraw its aid a few months ago after the government transferred a project chief.
Scheduled to be held from Sept. 9-10, the annual gathering of government officials and development partners will focus on human resources, financial management, public procurement and monitoring and evaluation of the development projects. Donors voiced similar concerns in the last NPPR held from last December.
The government will present a progress report of its commitments made during the last NPPR while the donors will also present their own version of the progress report of the projects they have funded and the challenges they faced during their implementation.
Kailash Pokharel, under-secretary at the Ministry of Finance (MoF), said the government had fulfilled most of its commitments. Pokharel said that transfers had become less frequent in recent days as the Ministry of General Administration rarely allows them.
In the last NPPR, the government had promised that frequent transfers of key officials of major projects would not happen, and that Nepal would comply with the Civil Service Act that bars transfer of government employees until they have served at least two years at one office. According to the MoF, Nijamati Kitabkhana is preparing a database of the civil servants which would also regulate their transfer.
Government’s financial management is one of the agenda under which discussions would focus on how to speed up reporting of the financial status. Pokharel said
that the government had introduced an incentive system at the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) to encourage OAG staff to audit the transactions of government agencies in a speedy manner.
NPPR 2009 concluded that transfer of accounting staff was the biggest obstacle to improving the reporting system. The number of accounting staff in government service was also been found to be inadequate.
Public procurement management is also another major item on the NPPR’s agenda this year. Donors voiced concern over growing obstruction, coercion and intimidation in the bidding process for publicly funded projects with the involvement of sister organisations of political parties. Pokharel said that the e-bidding system started by the government at the Department of Roads had helped to lessen this problem. Another topic of discussion is monitoring and evaluation which has not been happening properly. NPPR 2009 had recommended allocating a separate budget under the heading of monitoring and evaluation after it was revealed that budget constraints were one of the main reasons behind sluggish monitoring. According to Pokharel, the government has allocated a budget for monitoring and evaluation.
Posted on: 2010-08-25 08:23
Headlines
Advertisements
