Cabinet has reviewed government’s Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP) for the first half of 2004 and found that the performances have been “sub-optimal” due to several constraints.
Cabinet Secretary, Dr Roger Luncheon said yesterday that the main reasons were the late April passage of the national budget, capacity constraints within agencies and material management deficiencies.
Dr Luncheon said these are being addressed by Cabinet by a variety of statutory, reform and administrative means.
He pointed out that hundreds of millions of US dollars are committed to the infrastructural projects and the shortages of materials would have negative impacts on targets.
He said with the size of the PSIP for 2004, particular attention has to be paid on quarry products and the availability of transport to deliver the products to the ten administrative regions.
“The intention of Cabinet is to spot bottlenecks and put corrective measures in place, particularly the commercial enterprises which operate to the detriment of the timely execution of the projects,” Dr Luncheon said.
The Cabinet Secretary acknowledged that the bureaucratic delays in the Ministry of Finance have had a historical basis for some setbacks.
He said this is because of the manner in which public financial expenditure and management are done by the Ministry.
Measures are being put in place for 2005 to address the setbacks, he stated.
He announced that the government has engaged the donor community to have the passage of the national budget be done at an earlier period, possibly in December of the previous year or January of the same year.
He disclosed that the budget circular is already out and work is being done in the Ministries and regions.
“In the context of the new arrangement, we should soon be seeing the benefits and marked reduction of bureaucratic delays in the management of expenditure,” he stated. One of the shortages which faced the infrastructural works is the supply of bitumen.
Dr Luncheon said he had a fruitful meeting with the management of Shell Guyana Ltd and was assured that steps have been put in place to prevent further shortages.
He said Shell’s management explained that they had storage problems and the uniqueness of the specification of the bitumen being used for the works.
Measures to be taken by Shell include the doubling of its storage capacity.
Ninety percent of the bitumen stored by Shell would be for state and government purposes.
Dr Luncheon conceded that there was a change in the specification and volume of the bitumen required to carry out the works for the 2003-2005 programme. These include the four-lane highway on both sides of the Demerara Harbour Bridge, Mahaica-Rosignol road and Moleson Creek-New Amsterdam road.
He said perhaps this information was not channeled to Shell which is the sole importer, so the company imported the material in an abstract way.
But he pointed out that Shell is a commercial entity and if the company failed to supply, it could only be their fault.