APA-Grand-Bassam (Côte d'Ivoire) The Ivorian State, with a view to modernizing its budgetary and economic management, is committed to raising public financial management to the level of international standards with a view to efficient financing of its development policy.

In this momentum, the government, with the support of technical and financial partners, has adopted a master plan for public finance reforms.

The country will obtain support from the African Development Bank (AfDB) to finance a capacity-building programme for economic and financial administrations and public financial control structures.

This program is led by the Project to Support Economic and Financial Management called "PAGEF" with a portfolio of 15.968 billion CFA francs including 13.456 billion CFA francs from the AfDB and 2.512 billion CFA francs for the State of Côte d'Ivoire.

The objective of the PAGEF is to optimize the mobilization of budgetary resources and strengthen the framework for managing public expenditure. And, to profile its actions, the Ministry of Economy and Finance organized Wednesday a workshop in Grand-Bassam, 40 km southeast of Abidjan.

The coordinator of the PAGEF, Professor Bamba N'Galadjo, technical advisor to the Minister of Economy and Finance, said that the measures taken by all the actors, have made it possible to obtain as of December 31, 2020, a physical execution rate of 62.18% and a disbursement rate of 28.48%.

It also shows a commitment rate of 47.62% on the basis of contracts signed on the resources of the lessor, he stressed, before adding that "this rate would be 65.51% if we exclude the savings made for an amount of 2.4 billion FCFA".

As part of the internal resource mobilization (19 activities), nine contracts have been signed and are fully completed. In addition, "six signed contracts are in progress and four activities for which the recruitment process of the consultant is underway".

With regard to support for the management of the economy and the transparency of public expenditure, the results indicate 34 contracts concluded, 11 contracts in progress and six for which the recruitment process of the consultant is ongoing.

"At the level of the AfDB's project monitoring system, the ADF (31.8%) and FAT (25.23%) loans have orange flashing signals indicating that the project would be ineffective even if these rates were easily explained by the savings related to the good and fair expenditure, notwithstanding the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic," he continued.

This is why, he will say, during the last exchanges that the Technical Coordination Unit organized with the Task-Manager, "it was agreed that by 30 June 2021 we can reach the disbursement rates of at least 60% per financing instrument".

Mr. N'Galadjo announced that "the AfDB has responded favourably to the request to extend the date of the last disbursement of the project to December 31, 2021, thus giving the opportunity to implement the activities until June 30, 2022".

The Director of Cabinet of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Mrs. Minafou Fanta Coulibaly-Koné, explained that this project aims to "regulate public spending", while noting "heaviness" in the execution of actions.

The "delay" observed, she will emphasize, is partly due to the issuance of authorizations by the African Development Bank, calling for "more speed" of the institution's agreements to give rhythm to the execution of the work.

The workshop provided an opportunity to take stock of the physical and financial execution of the project as at 31 December 2020, and to examine the difficulties encountered in order to make recommendations for the due diligence of the remaining activities.