Together we will make it says Mutati & Chiteme

Together we will make it says Mutati & Chiteme

The Ministry of Finance and Ministry of National Development Planning have reaffirmed their commitment to foster stronger collaboration in the appraisal, financing, implementation, and monitoring of socio-economic development programmes.

This came to light when Minister of Finance Felix Mutati paid a courtesy call and delivered congratulatory remarks and best wishes to newly appointed Minister of National Development Planning, Alexander Chiteme, at the latter’s office in Lusaka.

The two Ministers agreed to, among other actions; endeavour to gain traction on increasing the government’s absorption capacity of available resources under bilateral and multi-lateral financing sources.

They underscored the need to strengthen the project appraisal process, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, and to enhance value for money in development financing.

Both Ministers expressed concern that the country currently has numerous incomplete projects at various levels some of which had received substantial funding.

They also indicated the need to be methodical in the manner in which projects are initiated to ascertain their efficacy to fiscal sustainability, economic development, employment creation, and poverty reduction.

Acknowledging the importance of the meeting, Mr. Chiteme says it is imperative that the two Ministries blended their approaches in the brand new year to ensure that they both carried and facilitated the efficient implementation of the country’s vision through effective execution of programmes in the 7NDP.

Appreciating the report from his counterpart, Mr. Mutati stressed the inevitability of improved inter-ministerial coordination to optimize the correlation of programmes in the Seventh National Development Plan with those in the annual national budget.

This is contained in a joint statement made available to QFM News by Ministry of Finance Head of Public Relations Chileshe Kandeta and Ministry of National Development Planning Head of Public Relations Sikabele Chikuba.