Govt to conduct sector-wise review of dev results

The government has decided to conduct sector-wise review of development results, aiming to get the picture of actual progress in the field in terms of achievements against targets.
For the first time in the decade-long history of portfolio performance review, the meeting of Nepal Portfolio Performance Review (NPPR) 2012 scheduled for Wednesday will review four different sectors -- agriculture, local governance, roads and energy.
"The government has decided to carry out sector-wise review of the development results now onwards to know the actual progress in the field," said Kailash Raj Pokharel, under secretary at the Ministry of Finance (MoF) and the coordinator of the NPPR meeting.
The country, which started receiving foreign aid for development from 1956, had started to conduct the portfolio performance review from 2000 based on themes such as public finance management, procurement, human resources, mutual accountability, and managing for development results.
"The sector-wise review of development activities will help us realize the actual benefit that people received from foreign aid," Pokharel told Republica on Tuesday.
Highlighting the government´s paradigm shift in the methodology of reviewing development projects, Pokharel said the development partners would now get to know the actual output generated by the assistance they provided.
The NPPR meeting that mainly focuses on reviewing projects and programs that are under implementation will also discuss on issues such as coordination among development partners themselves.
"We will review the achievements against targets of 2011 through group works," Pokharel added.
Meanwhile, four development partners -- Australia, Denmark, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and United State Agency for International Development (USADI) -- have joined the core membership of the NPPR in 2012.
“Now, 11 development partners have become core members of the NPPR," said Pokharel.
Asian Development Bank (ADB), Department for International Development (UK), European Union, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), United Nations, World Bank and Norway are the other development partners in the core membership of NPPR.
According to the report prepared for the meeting, the overall progress of NPPR 2011 action plan implementation has remained satisfactory. "The progress scenario his highly satisfactory in public finance management, satisfactory in public procurement, moderately satisfactory in human resource management and unsatisfactory in mutual accountability," reads the report.
The report states that internal auditing is weak in public finance management. “Lack of fairness in competitive bidding, absence of procurement plans, frequent staff transfer, inadequate and unsystematic training to the civil servants, lack of result based budgeting system and lack of transparency and predictability are major challenges in implementation of development projects," the report outlines.