Sri Lanka’s development project monitoring slows down
Sri Lanka’s foreign aided development project monitoring procedure has been weakened and impacting on economic activities.
This was the result of restricting the Project Management and Monitoring Department only for the activities of the coordination of relevant lending institutions and the Project Directors, Finance Ministry sources said.
This department, operating under the Finance Ministry, had been entrusted under the Ministry of Development Assignments from the year 2016 and the monitoring activities of the projects remained at a weak level thereafter, a senior official observed.
This was due to the correlations with the other departments under the Ministry of Finance such as the Departments of External Resources, and the National Budget Department, with the Project Management and Monitoring Department being distanced, official sources claimed.
The Government has entered into 35 financing commitment agreements with foreign development partners and lending agencies from January to November 30, 2018, Finance Ministry statistics showed.
Those financial commitments amounting to US$1.1 billion have been made to support the Public Investment Programme (PIP) in accordance with the macroeconomic targets envisaged in the Medium-Term Fiscal Framework.
Of the total commitments made during this period, $1 billion was offered in the form of loans and $72.5 million was in the form grants.
Out of the commitments made for the development activities during this period, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has made the highest commitment during January – November 2018 amounting to $438 million followed by World Bank ($104 million), Japan ($ 98.2 million), and China ($ 85 million).