The Kenyan authorities on Wednesday unveiled a new watchdog body to track down the impact of poverty spending on both rural and urban population as a way to foster the achievement of UN poverty alleviation goals.
Kenya's Planning and National Development Permanent Secretary Edward Sambili said the newly-formed National Integrated Monitoring and Evaluation System (NIMES), a new directorate in the ministry, would help to back up economic progress in the country.
"We are going into the full scale for the implementation of the NIMES program. We have now institutionalized monitoring and evaluation of government spending priorities," Sambili told journalists in Nairobi on Wednesday.
Kenyan parliamentarians, who enjoy unparalleled power in the management of delved constituency Development Funds, have been under evaluation of the new system aimed at speeding up Kenya's pro-poor expenditure plans.
Sambili said the delved funds, under which each of Kenya's 210 electoral zones, known as constituencies, are given an amount of money commensurate with their population from the national expenditure, would be monitored in future to avoid misuse of funds.
The watchdog body will produce annual reports on misuse of public funds at local and national levels and also carry out surveys on the implementation of the national budget.
"It will not only monitor government, it will monitor all other projects," Sambili said.
The Kenyan authorities, he said, have spent over 400 billion shillings (about 6.5 billion U.S. dollars) on various development projects over the last four years. But the impact of these projects on poverty alleviation is yet to be measured, Sambili said.
"This is a process we are demystifying, just like we demystified foreign exchange controls. It is complex in actual fact, but specific groups and individuals will help provide relevant data for the monitoring," Sambili explained.
He said the centralized data gathering system will help provide policy guidance to the cabinet, which makes decisions over the ultimate spending and legislative priorities.
Source: Xinhua
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