Budget Discipline Plan Under Consideration

A three-day MINFI annual conference ended on January 24, 2014 with wide-ranging recommendations.

The Minister of Finance, Alamine Ousmane Mey, has announced an imminent setting up of a budgetary disciplinary plan, a framework that will allow for a systematic monitoring and follow up of actions of the ministry vis-à-vis the execution of the State budget.

He made the announcement last Friday January 24 while rounding off three days of brainstorming on what strategies to adopt for an efficient mobilisation and use of the FCFA 3,312 billion 2014 State budget. This was the annual conference of senior officials of the Ministry of Finance which held in Yaounde (January 22-24) on the theme, "Performance and budgetary discipline at the service of emergence: Everybody's concern."

Minister Alamine Ousmane Mey said ensuring budgetary discipline will allow all Cameroonians to benefit from the fruits of growth and better living conditions. "We know that the ministry has the human resources to attain this objective but where we need additional input is in our behavours," he said.

The Director General of the Budget, Antoine Félix Samba, in charge of the budgetary performance and discipline said they are already taking steps to ensure that funds sent to particular sectors serve the purpose for which they were allocated. Meanwhile, the taxation department with the uphill task of collecting FCFA 1,240 billion, its Director General, Modeste Mopa Fatoing said, has already begun reorganizing the tax services especially the medium taxpayers' offices so as to be more present on the field as well as offer quality services to the taxpayers.

With the difficulties that marred the customs department last year, robbing it of its hitherto beyond-target performances, the Director General of Customs, Minette Libom Li Likeng, said they have resolved to uphold strategies which have been tasted and confirmed for efficiency and accountability in the sector. Ethics and the promotion of governance, she said, is at the fore and they are improving on these strategies taking into considerations the new orientations of the Minister and of the Head of State.

The Director General of Treasury, Monetary and Financial Cooperation, Sylvester Moh Tangongho, indicated that it is all about mobilising more resources and managing the available liquidity which are not in unlimited amount and managing the limited resources efficiently in such a way that no sector of the economy will be blocked and more importantly that the structural and giant projects of the Head of State are executed harmoniously.