-USAID Mission Director
The successful completion of the US-funded two-year Guyana Threshold Country Plan/Implementation Project (GTCP/IP), has placed the government in a better position to raise more revenue and to implement more strategic and efficient economic plans, Mission Director of USAID Carol Horning says.
The GTCP/IP is a collaboration between the US and Guyana governments which has been funded by the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). This followed the US Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) approving a Threshold Program US $6.7million grant to the government. The project was aimed at supporting the government’s efforts to overcome the country’s serious fiscal challenges, while also streamlining the business registration process. The programme commenced on January 14, 2008 and is set to conclude on February 23 of this year.
On Thursday, the first session of a two-day evaluation workshop was held in the Savannah Suite of the Pegasus Hotel where various stakeholders who were part of the project participated.
Horning, the Mission Director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), during her address commended the government for its commitment to the project and pointed out that its success is due largely to the support received from the administration. She said the project targeted the difficult area of creating institutional change in different sectors in the country. She opined that these institutional changes would enable the government to raise more revenue and to be more strategic and efficient in economic planning. She said ultimately this would improve the business climate of the country which would attract more investors to the country.
According to Horning, the fulfilment of several of the objectives of the project by the country is “a remarkable achievement” especially when compared with other countries. She said she herself had initial doubts about the country achieving the identified objectives in such a short space of time. She, however, stressed that this project was just one aspect of the continuum of development within the country.
Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh said that important lessons were to be learnt from the success of this programme. He said that coherence within a related agenda, the importance of the country involved maintaining “country ownership” and the realistic defining of objectives were part of the reasons why the programme was “an outstanding success.”’
Speaking to media operatives after delivering his feature address, the Finance Minister Dr Singh said that the programme has had several positive spin-offs for various sectors of the country which will ultimately filter down to the people.
Identifying some of the key objectives and components of the programme, Singh said efforts were made to improve Parliamentary oversight and to offer institutional strengthening to the Parliament office. This includes computerizing the Hansard (record of parliamentary proceedings) and improving the opening of the committees division. In terms of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) , he said under this project there was strengthening of the tax administration as well as the body’s IT’s system. Public Financial Management at the Finance Ministry also benefited from intense training sessions.
Another key component of the project, Singh said was the improving of the record keeping capacity of the Deeds Registry thereby reducing the length of time it takes to register businesses. According to Singh, such developments have the potential to improve the environment for private sector operations in Guyana.
Chairperson of the Project Dr Coby Frimpong said that of the US$6.6 million budgeted for the programme as of the end of last month, 94.4 percent of the money (US$ 6.28 million) had been utilized. He noted that the project had achieved several of its objectives particularly within the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), where they worked towards organizing transformation to deliver increased revenues”.
He said that under the programme the restructuring of the Authority into a functional organization was achieved and a comprehensive tax review system was completed. Further there was the drafting of the Tax Administration Law and the Streamlining of the Total Revenue Integrated Processing System (TRIPS).
Frimpong said that the “development of a three-year training plan”, the “training of 85 technical officers as trainers”, “provision of general and technical training” , “upgrading of training facilities” and the “development of training materials” were key accomplishments.
Further, the construction of “draft-project plans related to the revised Kyoto Convention and SAFE framework and the strengthening of the Authority’s anti-smuggling capacity were identified by the Chairpersons as positives coming out of the programme. Additionally, the “enhancing customs and trade facilitation”, “developing of a document management and archival system” and “modernizing the resource centre and library”, were also singled out he added.
Meanwhile, he identified among the broad challenges the: “realities of diagnostic studies”, “human resource constraints”, “reform fatigue”, “differences on the strategic path of reforms and “multiple demands on senior managers’ time”. Dr Singh, in his address, had commended the Revenue Authority for the job they were doing in fulfilling a wide scope of responsibilities.
The project was managed and administered by the USAID Mission in Georgetown and the Regional Contracting Office in the Dominican Republic under a SEGIR Macro II IQC Task order with Nathan Associates Inc. as the prime contractor.
