General meeting of the municipality: Only 2% of state budget for Decentralized territorial communities

février 9, 2019 Nfor AMOS TALLA 1769 Views

The first ever general meeting of the municipaly from 6 to 7 February 2019 saw the Prime Minister’s plea for more investment in the communes.

Despite the FCFA 100 million to be disbursed this year, for the projects in municipalities, the mayors denounce the decline in resources expected, speaking at the occasion in the Congress Hall, the Senegalese Alioune Badiane, an international specialist in decentralization, has been applauded by mayors because he gave a particular echo to their claim, that government should transfer more financial resources to councils.

At the opening of the conference, Alioune Badiane encouraged Cameroon to draw inspiration from two African countries, namely Kenya where the constitution stipulated that 15% of the state budget is allocated to decentralized territorial communities, while in South Africa, the government spend 52% of its budget on provinces and municipalities. Cameroon is one of the last as only 2% state budget is spent on decentralized communities, 36 billion FCFA allocated councils starting this year and to be shared among 360 councils represent less than 1% of state budget.

Nevertheless the envelop is far better than that of last year 2017 and 2018 which stood at 5 billion that was released for decentralization.

The mayors equally criticized the way in which this money is being made available to them, they are expected to table their project, and it’s the ministry of decentralization and local development that decide which project will be implemented, and at the end, not all of the budget is being exhausted, that is the government gives with the right hand and collects with the left hand.

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