A $3 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank is assisting the government with the implementation of a Public Financial Management and Performance Monitoring Reform (PFM/PMR) that was launched yesterday.
During a brief launch ceremony at the British Colonial Hilton yesterday morning, Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) and Minister of Finance Peter Turnquest said the project is geared at not only improving the government’s financial management, but implementing its policies.
“Component one focuses on improving the government’s capacity to in plain English get the job done. More formally, the component will induce a center of government which will provide focus on the capacity to monitor projects and ensure that induvial ministerial departments and industries are allocating resources to projects that are in line,” Mr. Turnquest said.
“Component two focuses on the creation of a national statistics system. Component three is the largest component of this project focused on the the public financial management system. Component four is strengthening the public procurement state by promoting competition for procurement and transparency in procurement in an effort to ensure value for money.”
The DPM noted that the project comes on the heels of the country lagging behind other Caribbean economies when it comes to the ease of doing business.
“Jamaica and the Dominican Republic is gaining or surpassed us in terms of the ease of doing business, in terms of the tourism sector,” he said.
“As I said to my team the other day, I’m very competitive and I don’t accept being second third or fourth and so we are going to be taking some quantum leaps in the next several years because we are going to regain our advantage.”
Also bringing remarks was Director and CEO of The Bahamas Chamber of Commerce Edison Sumner, who agrees that the project should greatly assist in changing this picture.
“To be effective, the public sector transformation has to have the support and buy in of the private sector since in large measure it is the private sector and the citizens at large who are most impacted by the work of the public sector,” Mr. Turnquest said.
“Better results are achieved when we see the value of working together through collaboration and partnerships such as public-private partnership or public-private dialogue models which have proven to be very effective in the past.”
The loan for the project was approved in July of 2014 and was not finalized until last year February.
