Local and central government officials yesterday converged at Parliament, to sign Imihigo (performance contracts) with the President, an act Prime Minister Anastase Murekezi said aims at boosting service delivery.

The premier pointed out that the set targets for 2013/14 were not fully achieved mainly due to poor planning, while some officials gave themselves low targets so they can easily achieve them and be ranked highly.

"In this fiscal year, under Imihigo programme, we plan to increase exports mainly from mining and agriculture by 28 per cent and increase irrigational land from 27,000 to 32,000 hectares, while farmers using improved fertilisers will increase from 44 per cent to 60 per cent,” Murekezi said.

In the previous year, new investments amounted to $1.4 billion while at the end of this fiscal year, government hopes to register $2.6 billion worth of investments.

In the energy sector, the country looks to produce at least 196 Megawatts of electricity from the current 119MW, said the Prime Minister.

"In improving people’s welfare, we plan to finalise the revision of classification of Ubudehe levels. We intend to embark on a sensitisation campaign to increase the universal health scheme subscription from the current 73.8 per cent to 95 per cent this year. We  also plan to fast-track the national employment programme by creating new jobs for youth and women,” the Premier said.

He added that over 124, 000 vulnerable Genocide survivors and 4,200 ex-combatants will be supported in terms of health care, shelter and education.

Under the governance cluster, the Prime Minister said emphasis will be put on ‘smart communication’ and effective service delivery as well as opening of new embassies.

Districts targets

During the same event, the Minister for Local Government, Francis Kaboneka, presented what districts intend to achieve in the financial year 2014/15, saying that revenues collected from districts will increase from Rwf34.5 billion collected in the previous year to Rwf40.4 billion.

"We hope to raise the money by strengthening partnership between districts and Rwanda Revenue Authority. While in agriculture, we target to increase the consolidated land to 727,000 hectares on selected crops,” Kaboneka said.

Under the agriculture cluster, the minister added that 6,806 new hectares of terraces will be constructed while in the infrastructure sector, 3,436 biogas plants will be constructed.

"In improving people’s welfare 85, 000 families will receive direct support while 65,500 will receive loans under the Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme (VUP). We also plan to construct and renovate 19 health centres in different parts of the country while 1,097 classrooms will be constructed to boost education,” Kaboneka said.

Following the presentation, district mayors and cabinet ministers signed the contracts with the President.