Parliament convenes this week amid 2014 budget worries

By Cyprian Ntiamba Obi Ntui in Yaounde
Cameroonian law makers will converge in Yaounde on 12 November for their third ordinary session. A key item on the agenda of this session is the debate and adoption of next year’s budget. What disturbs many Cameroonians is that a new budget is about to be voted into law when they have seen little or nothing in terms of the execution of the 2014 budget.
    According to “Le Jour”, a French language newspaper, the ministry of public contracts carried out a nation wide survey to assess the level of execution of public investing Budget PIB- and came out with disturbing statistics. The source stated that as at 15 October the ministry of public contracts had awarded 2765 contracts representing about 98.8% of contracts due for award this year.

    Out of the number awarded, it went on some 2620 contractors had started work with some of them reaching a level of execution of barely 49%. Of these only 797 contractors had finished work, representing 29% of all contracts, while the government paid out a total sum of 5.9bn FCFA to these contractors.
    The source then went further to rank the ten regions in order of their level of execution of the public investment budget. In this regard, the East province was ranked first. There, the source stated , out of 202 projects approved for the region 190 had been contracted out and were at varying levels of execution with some reaching a 50% level of execution. This means that the East province has contracted out 96% of projects contained in its PIB for 2014.
    In terms of ranking, after the East province came the Far North with 98.5% of its projects contracted out,  followed by the North West, Adamawa, South, Centre, Littoral, West, South West and the North region, in that order the source revealed. It added that the ranking took into consideration the following three yardsticks: The number of jobs advertised, the number of contracts already signed out and the level of execution of contracts signed.
    The question Cameroonians are asking in whether it is worthwhile voting and adopting a new budget when the current one is still at such a low level of execution. Many are therefore of the opinion that whatever is debated and voted as the 2015 budget would be fictitious.
    Everything being equal, our source stated, the government was supposed to make available to the parliamentarians a review (balance sheet) of all government activities during the current year to enable them acquaint themselves on what to debate during their session but so far this has not been done. Parliamentarians are expected to debate this national balance sheet first at committee level and then at the plenary, adopt it before moving on to debate next year’s finance bill.
    Worse of all the supreme court was supposed to look into and approve such balance sheet  before forwarding it to the parliamentarians. The questions and answers that emanate from parliamentarians on the state of the nation after reading this balance sheet make for a lively session of parliament, the source believes.
    Most Cameroonians are therefore not enthusiastic that the up coming session of parliament would be different from the previous lack lustre ones. The law makers are only coming to validate whatever is dictated to them by the executive most Cameroonians say.