E-PBF

Public procurement plays an important role in Cameroon's economic policy. This importance is reflected, among other things, in the considerable budget allocated to the implementation of its activities.

In this key sector of public investment, a number of dysfunctions have been identified that are hampering its performance and that of the economy as a whole.

These include: failure by stakeholders to meet procurement deadlines, multiple committee sessions, irregular payment of committee members' allowances, and payments that are not commensurate with the work produced. These factors contribute to the poor performance of the public procurement system.

Therefore, with a view to greater effectiveness and efficiency in the fulfilment of the tasks assigned to those involved in procurement, the Government, with the support of the World Bank through the Project to Improve the Efficiency of Public Expenditure and the Statistical System (PEPS), has opted to introduce a new method of remuneration for these actors through a performance-based financing (PBF) mechanism.

With this in mind, the Minister of Public Procurement issued Decree No. 0271/MINMAP/CAB of 27 September 2018 establishing and organising the terms and conditions for performance-based remuneration and payment for certain actors in the public procurement system. From now on, the activities of the commissions (CPM, CCCMP and SCAO), SIGAMPs, experts appointed by the CCCMP and the Appeals Review Committee (CER) will be remunerated according to the level of achievement of the performance objectives assigned to them.

The choice of Performance-Based Financing for the remuneration of procurement actors is based in particular on:

• the results observed in the implementation of PBF in the health sector;
• consistency with the objectives of the ongoing public finance reform, in particular the pursuit of performance;
• the implementation of the recommendations of the World Bank study on bottlenecks in procurement, which recommends changing the method of remuneration for public procurement actors to link it to performance;
• improving the quality of services provided by procurement actors.

The implementation of this remuneration method, prior to its generalisation, will be carried out in a pilot phase over a period of one (01) year in eight (08) administrations, namely: MINMAP, MINFI, MINEPAT, MINEDUB, MINSANTE, MINHDU, ARMP and PEPS.

This procedures manual, drawn up in accordance with Article 42 of the above-mentioned text, sets out the terms and conditions for implementing the performance-based financing mechanism for the evaluation and remuneration of procurement actors.