System to track funds

The National National

By DELORESE TALASI
THE Department of Implementation and Rural Development has presented K300,000 to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for the development of provincial and district services improvement programme (PSIP & DSIP) date base system.
The system will be developed to monitor and evaluate all SIP-funded projects and programmes and is to start next year as the national government had allocated K1 million for the project to be delivered.
Finance and Rural Development vice-minister Joseph Sungi said under the Organic Law and the Provincial Level Government Planning Act there was a requirement that all levels of government were required to submit and have a five- year development plan.
Sungi said even though the plans were funded and submitted, the biggest challenge for the country was tracking the performance of those plans.
“This is the biggest problem for the country, we have not been successful in tracking the performances of the plans that we have done, approved and funded,” he said.
“The biggest weakness in this country is to track the performance of the development plans and report back on what has been achieved out of the plans.”
Sungi said accountability to report back to the people on the amount of money received and what has been achieved using those funds have been lacking also in the country.
“I think what we need now is to take stock of ourselves as the government and come back to see what we can do to be able to account and track the performance of the funding that are going to the provinces, districts, LLGs and the wards.”
Sungi said the Department of Implementation and Rural Development needed support because the workload put on the department was so huge that the department could not track all the projects being undertaken by provincial governments through the PSIP and DSIP.
Minister counsellor from the Australian High Commission Andrew Egan reflected on Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s commitment in response to a direct request from Prime Minister James Marape for Australia to provide some budget support this year.