By Maurice Ayuketang Nso
Background:
Resulting from Law No. 2018/012 of July 2018, Cameroon is officially, legally and currently using the Programme-Based Budgeting (PBB) System. This budgeting system went operational from the 2022 fiscal and financial budget year.
Problem with the Status Quo:
A pure programme-based budgeting system is too ambitious on its own, although excellent. In practice, according to online sources, Cameroon faces issues of; weak and inconsistent data, limited performance measurement capacity, budget choices politicisation, nonuniform skills across ministries and councils. Where these exists, programme budgeting risk becoming goodlooking objectives with weak execution. An alternative to this was pure project-based budgeting but it is too narrow and had a weak link to Vision 2035 and sectoral strategies, probably one of the reasons it was substituted. In the proposed hybrid system both programme-based system and project-based system will compliment each other.
Narrative:
Cameroon is currently using Programme-Based Budgeting with projects implanted inside programmes. Cameroon’s current budget system is planned around missions, programmes and actions / projects. With this in mind, when the Finance Law is presented to the parliament, allocations are voted by programme while ministries are evaluated by programme performance. Although the system is programme-based, projects are still; planned, costed, executed and monitored but no longer on a stand-alone basis. Each project is linked to a programme and a project without a justified programme should not be funded. In the view of this some experts and opinion leaders hold that in practice, Cameroon operates a hybrid budget structure even though the official legal text labeled it programme-based budgeting. This confusion amongst experts is itself another problem with the system.
Proposition:
A hybrid budgeting system would mean that programmes should guide the strategy while projects should drive the budget execution. This requires the usage of both programme-based budgeting to define strategic goals and resources allocation and project-based budgeting to implement, monitor, and control expenditures.
How Does this Work:
All starts at the top and then moves down ensuring the national decentralisation objectives with the government defining the national primacies, such as in the National Development Strategy, NDS30 or the emergent Vision 2035. Here are the following steps;
Step 1: Policy and Strategy Level:
The government defines the national urgencies as documented in the National Development Strategy (NDS30) document and each minister or ministry decodes these into: missions and programmes. For example, if the mission is to improve higher education standards, the programme could be to enhance quality and relevance of the university’s education in Cameroon. At this step the focus is on the attainment of key objectives and outcomes and not on the individual activities yet.
Step 2: Medium-Term Program Planning:
This usually takes 2-3 years and each programme should be given; strategic objectives, performance indicators and indicative budget ceilings to manage to realise the programme or programmes. This stage will help to answer the question, how much can the government afford to spend on the programme over the next 2-3 years? This will also remove one of the weaknesses of the NDS30 which has no budgeted estimates associated with its realisation.
Step 3: Breakdown into Projects:
At this point the programme is translated into concrete projects, breaking down each programme into; actions, sub-actions and finally into projects. At this stage project-based budgeting starts with each project having; clear outputs, timeline, cost estimate and responsible unit.
Step 4: Annual Budget Preparation:
This annual budget is hybrid in action, where the parliament votes for the budget by programme and the ministers or ministries manage the budget through execution of the stipulated project in NDS30. This dual structure is at the heart of the hybrid system with the programme viewed as the legal and strategic budget unit, while the project is seen as the operational and accounting unit.
Step 5: Budget Execution:
In this stage, funds are released against projects during the fiscal year for procurement, payments, etc. and supervision happen at project level while managers have the time to focus on; costs, timelines, outputs etc. This stage ensures acute control, visibility, and discipline in strategy and budget implementation.
Step 6: Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning:
This happens at both the project level and the programme level. This prevents the classic problem where all projects are completed but have no real and visible impact on development.
Step 7: Reporting and Accountability:
At the end of each year, projects report shows the funds used against the outputs delivered. While the programmes performance report shows the results achieved and the progress made toward policy goals as stipulated in NDS30. This helps decision-makers to adjust future programmes and to redesign or drop weak projects that are not in line with the national development goal.
Conclusion:
The hybrid budgeting system flows in a simple chain from “policy-programme-project-execution-results”. In other words, “the programmes decide priorities, projects deliver outputs and results justify future budgets”. This system should work best in developing countries by; improving budgetary accountability, producing visible results at both national and decentralised levels, ensuring strategic coherence and respecting administrative capacity and authority. The hybrid system links policy goals with tangible development outcomes. The formalisation of the hybrid model will remove the confusion that dwelled amongst practitioners.