The government will set up a US $ 4 million Programmatic Project Preparation Facility (PPPF) to ensure the smooth implementation of public investment projects.
A Cabinet paper forwarded by the Prime Minister this week noted in the ‘2017 Country Portfolio Programme Performance Review (CPPR)’, that “the Ministry of National Policies and Economic Affairs and the World Bank were of the view that lengthy project preparation and inception processes have an adverse impact in achieving the desired outcomes and smooth implementation of the projects.”
The World Bank, thus, has agreed to provide prior funding for the World Bank-funded development projects through the PPPF to carry out successful project preparation, design and initial implementation activities.
The PPPF, the Cabinet paper stated, will provide the government, “the certainty of funding availability for preparatory activities, allowing government entities to plan and prepare public investments efficiently”.
The objectives of the PPPF have been described as, “to improve quality at the inception of projects, to improve the implementation mechanisms, to enhance the capacity within implementing agencies of the GoSL and to produce standard project preparation documents.”
The PPPF is to be centrally managed and coordinated by the National Planning Department of the Ministry of National Policies and Economic Affairs and implemented through various Project Implementation Units (PIU).
Its timeframe is three years from July 2017 to June 2020 and will expire at the end of the current Country Partnership Framework (June 2020). The World Bank will monitor the implementation progress of the PPPF and project teams of the World Bank will work directly with the PIUs to ensure that the PPPF is implemented as expected.
The Cabinet also granted approval to allocate US $ 3 million for project preparatory activities of the PPPF for the year 2018. They also allocated Rs. 20 million in 2018 from the Consolidated Fund for the Foreign Finance Associated Domestic Expenses of the PPPF to cover taxes and other administrative expenses.
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