The Government and its development partners as well as the private sector want more effective utilisation of aid.

This was revealed yesterday during the 7th development partners retreat in Rubavu District.

"It requires us all to embrace aid effectiveness agenda to reduce unnecessary implementation costs through the use of country systems and making aid more predictable in line with mutual accountability,” John Rwangombwa, the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning said.

Government is also seeking to create a single treasury account in order to effectively manage funds from different donor accounts. Its absence, the government says, leads to less effectiveness of aid.

The retreat is an annual forum through which government and development partners review its achievements as it plans ahead by exchanging ideas, seeking innovative solutions to development challenges and jointly agrees on practical ways of addressing them.

"At the previous retreat, we committed to implement a set of recommendations including agreeing to division of labour, conducting a development partners’ assessment framework as well as agreeing to a principle single project implementation unit (SPIU).

Most of these actions have been fully implemented while others are on-going,” Rwangombwa said.

Government and the development partners also made field visits to witness economic development progress and the sites included Muhanga District Vision 2020 Umurenge programme, the construction of Ngororero-Mukamira road, and the electricity rollout in Ngororero district.

In line with achieving the set targets of the government’s vision 2020, out of 44 initial targets, 66 percent of them are on-track, 11 percent are on-watch while 22 percent are off-track.

Some of the areas on-track include health, gender, education and economy while some off track include population, poverty and environment.

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