CI-NEWS

For transparency and optimal management: Gov’t creates Basket Fund lodged at Central Bank to host s

2019-08-06

No: 439

For transparency and optimal management:

Gov’t creates Basket Fund lodged at Central Bank to host state funds meant for project executions.

State funds meant for the execution of projects in the country will henceforth be kept in the Central Bank to enable Cameroon improve its performance in the execution of co-funded projects.

This revolutionary approach was announced at a concertation meeting between government and development partners on the modalities of the functioning of the “Basket Fund” for counterpart funds in Yaounde last Tuesday and chaired by Finance boss Louis Paul Motaze with the aim to educate public Administrators, representatives of commercial banks and foreign donors on the importance of the initiative.

Going by the organisers of the symposium, the state of Cameroon will bring together the funds meant for projects execution in a “Basket Fund” which will be lodged in the Central Bank. This move will ease visibility over the money rather than it being dispatched in several banking institutions.

Apart from the above mentioned advantage, the basket fund will reportedly help the State manage its finances in a very optimal way with much transparency to avoid lateness in project execution.

The decision was arrived at after it was discovered that up to 44.5 billion FCFA of such funds belonging to 400 accounts were lying idle in commercial banks, while the state found it difficult at crucial moments to cough up its own share of counterpart funds to finance pressing projects funded by donors, Motaze said at the meeting.

Addressing the partners, he promised that government would continue to implement particularly reforms intended to improve on the quality of spending and the management of the treasury, in line with the programme of reforming public finances. He said project accounts of state institutions lodged in commercial banks would be closed down and transferred to a unique account at BEAC from where they would be withdrawn at the appropriate time for counterpart fund financing.

Participants at the meeting had the opportunity to listen to a presentation by BEAC on the modalities for the functioning of the Basket Fund and another by the Debt Sinking Fund (CAA), manager of the ‘Basket Fund”, on the situation of counterpart funds in commercial banks.

Speaking to the press at the end of the meeting, Tela Samuel, director of treasury at MINFI, said the “Basket Fund” is not a contradiction of the state policy of decentralization of the management of funds, but would lead to an optimal management of funds. Centralisation of the account, he said, would also make the state have a eye in the management of funds and thus check embezzlement.

Taking the cue from his colleague, Emmanuel Asafor Cho, Deputy Director No 2 at BEAC, said the Common Fund for projects would lead to an optimal management of funds and projects. He said conventions for the opening of the “Basket Fund” had been signed between the Minister of Finance and the Director of the Central Bank for ready mobilization of funds to finance projects. Asafor said the base of the common fund would be balances got from the accounts of closed projects.

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For transparency and optimal management: Gov’t creates Basket Fund lodged at Central Bank to host s