Govt job renewals will be based on project performance, Ggoobi tells accounting officers 

The Ministry of Finance has warned accounting officers to ensure that projects under their ministries, departments, and agencies are executed within set timelines, failure of which they will be held liable for cost delays.
In details contained in the Performance of Externally Funded Projects report, Mr Ramathan Ggoobi, the Ministry of Finance permanent secretary and secretary to the Treasury, said that whereas government has over the years mobilised resources both domestically and externally to fund social and economic infrastructure, projects are often delayed and poorly implemented, thus resulting into substantial loss of taxpayers money.
This has largely, he said, been the case with donor-funded projects where disbursement of borrowed money takes years, yet commitment fees on such money are paid upfront.
“Accounting officers will henceforth, be personally liable for the cost of delays in project implementation … as we commence the journey towards a ten-fold growth of our economy, the performance of projects in various votes will be a performance measure for renewal of contracts for accounting officers,” Mr Ggoobi said, noting that stakeholders, particularly accounting officers, must critically review the Performance of Externally Funded Projects report to eliminate delays in project implementation.
Unused loans remain a huge cost to government with large amounts of borrowed money going for years without being utilised.
In the Debt Statistical Bulletin for the year ended June 2024, the Ministry of Finance noted that the stock of unused external loans rose by $500m (Shs1.8 trillion) due to sluggishness in the implementation of government projects, increasing from $3.1b (Shs11.4 trillion) in June 2023 to $3.6b (Shs13.2 trillion).
The report cited delayed acquisition of the right of way, insufficient government counterpart funding, inadequate project preparedness, and delayed achievement of conditions of effectiveness as the main causes of failure for the timely project implementation. The World Bank holds the largest share of unused loans at $856m, followed by the OPEC Fund with $52.3m.
In its report for the year ended June 2023, the Auditor General indicated that government was spending an average of $10.63m (Shs38.9b) annually as commitment fees on utilised loans resulting from failure to draw down and absorb the contracted debt.
Thus, Mr Ggoobi noted that government, through the Ministry of Finance and the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, had decided to produce semiannual assessment reports on externally funded projects, which will give a comprehensive description of progress, starting with at least 82 projects that will be assessed using the Earned Value Management approach to mitigate wastage of government funds.
The Performance of Externally Funded Projects report, which is the first in a series of others expected shortly, found that the largest number of poorly performing projects were under the agro-industrialization and integrated transport and infrastructure services, followed by human capital development programmes, mostly in the education sub-programme.
This was largely due to poor planning, limited technical capacity of project design teams, poor project management with unclear deliverables, and limited stakeholder consultation and communication, thus limiting local buy-in and support.
Therefore, the report noted that most externally funded projects were behind schedule, with funding from development partners not forthcoming as planned, while counterpart funding, which is largely contributed by government, having significant cost overruns.
“This means that citizens will have to wait much longer, and at a higher cost, to enjoy the benefits of these investments. To that effect, it is important to reassess these investments to ascertain whether it is worthwhile to pursue these ventures to the end,” the report reads in part.
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