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Sir Louis Straker, centre,  Housing Minister Montgomery Daniel and Attorney General Judith Jones-Morgan during Monday's debate. (iWN photo)
Sir Louis Straker, centre, Housing Minister Montgomery Daniel and Attorney General Judith Jones-Morgan during Monday’s debate. (iWN photo)
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Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sir Louis Straker will see the number of programmes under his ministry fall from 11 to four this year as the government expands its strategic budget reform initiative to all ministries.

In presenting the Estimates of Income and Expenditure for 2017 to Parliament on Monday, Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Ralph Gonsalves noted that in 2016, he told lawmakers that his government would use five ministries as pilots for the budget reform.

The pilot ministries were Finance, Agriculture, Education, National Mobilisation and Health.

Gonsalves said that in the 2017 estimates, the reform has been fully rolled out to all ministries and department.

He told Parliament that the main objectives of the reform are “to strengthen the linkages between the government’s strategic policy priorities and the budget, improve performance management and reporting by sharpening the focus of the measurements and delivery of results, and streamlining the programme structures of ministries and departments to reflect better the core functions of each portfolio”.

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The prime minister said that, to this end, the result indicators have been replaced by strategic priorities and key programme strategies or activities.

“The strategic priorities are intended to highlight the most important, transformative initiatives of the overall ministry while the key programme strategies or activities focus on the headline activities at the programme level.”

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He said that at the level of each programme, there are output and outcome indicators which measure the work produced and the impact these deliverables have on the beneficiaries of the goods and services bring produced by each programme.

Gonsalves told lawmakers that the reporting format allows for qualitative and quantitative measurements of performance “thus providing a more comprehensive understanding of the overall productivity of the given ministry or department”.

He said that his government has also refined the programme structures of a number of ministries.

For example, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Consumer Affairs, has four programmes, down from 11, the prime minister said.

The second initiative in this year’s Estimates is the reallocation of the portfolio of Regional Integration and Diaspora affairs from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Office of the Prime Minister.

Third, the public sector unit has been transferred from the Office of the Prime Minister to the Service Commissions Department.

“The move is expected to foster greater functional synergies as these two public service oriented programmes work more closely together under the leadership of the chief personnel officer,” Gonsalves said.

The final initiative is the 83 new positions created across the public service to enhance service delivery to citizens, the prime minister said.

4 replies on “Programmes under Straker’s ministry reduced from 11 to 4”

  1. All this intellectual garbage is nothing more than a smoke screen to cover up the apparent failure of the ulp administration to create any new initiatives to harness the energy of young people. The education revolution is a dismal failure, churning out educated statues, the ministry of economic affairs a dismal failure, yes and I have been a supporter of the ulp. Every now and then the PM runs away and come back saying he had success while the frustration grows. 83 positions? how many more are still unemployed. The same thing again, some people going to the navy, some to pick fruits and the musical chairs continue. Ralph looks tired. The people of SVG needs to rise up en masse and throw both the NDP and the ULP in the gutter behind heritage square and clamour for new leadership before the AIA finds itself in a death spiral.

  2. For a tiny country, this government is far too big, far too costly, and far too intrusive.

    The core functions of any state are to maintain and promote the physical security, self determination, and economic well being of its people, functions this government has failed to satisfactorily perform.

    Everything else it does — including the direct control over and provision of education and health care — is optional.

    This government has also failed to satisfactorily perform in these two optional areas, as the learning outcomes (as opposed to paper credentials) of our students and their inability to secure well paying jobs once they graduate together with the disgraceful level of health care delivery clearly show.

  3. Reduce the amount of programs, increase the number of staff…? Why is it that in SVG we need more staff to do less work? I have noticed that in other countries they have less staff and get more work done…sounds like SVG has a training and management problem(s) more than anything else. Maybe the management first needs to be trained. Does anyone else reading this information about SVG see the same things I do, or do I expect too much from the Public Service?

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