By Dave Kissoondoyal

In the 2007/2008 budget speech the Minister of Finance announced the reform of the budgetary process to link spending with results. Mention was made to assist ministries to take ownership of their projects and to appoint, on a contract basis, a project manager for each one of the large projects.  In this connection, the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development [MOFED] in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Infrastructure (MPI) and the Audit Monitoring Committee was supposed to develop a Capital Budget Process Manual. Thus full movement to Programme Based Budgeting (PBB) was envisaged in 2008/09. The PBB focuses on the outcomes to be achieved and the outputs to achieve the outcomes.  The inputs in the traditional line item budget will be closely linked to the outputs via performance indicators that ensure spending is effective and efficient.  

The Minister announced that the key to his Programme Based Budgeting lies beneath the word “result”. In this method, the entire planning and budgeting framework is result oriented. We are at the end of 2009; this is the 3^rd Budget of the Minister of Finance after this measure was announced, yet we can’t see the results for the objectives by the different ministries since July 2007.