Civil servants briefed about Capacity Building Fund

Potential beneficiaries of the Capacity Building Fund (CBF) were, yesterday, sensitised on the guidelines required to access the money that the government ha s earmarked to improve skills in the public sector. CBF is a government fund managed by the Public Sector Capacity Building Secretariat (PSCBS). It was approved by the Cabinet in February 2009 to finance strategic capacity building activities in a coordinated, transparent and efficient manner. Speaking at the forum, Alphonse Kalinganire, the coordinator of the fund, said that CBF was put in place to increase effectiveness and efficiency of capacity building activities across the public sector. “The civil servants, who are beneficiaries of the fund, needed to be briefed about the contents of the CBF procedures manual in order to understand the processes of accessing CBF resources,” he said. Kalinganire stressed that in the 2011/2012fiscal year, 70 percent of CBF will be spent on six key priorities of the Kivu National Retreat that was held early this year. These include; viable small and medium enterprises, electricity generation, education, communication at all times and with everyone playing their part, delivering US$550m of investments in 2011 and ICT. “The remaining 30 percent will be spent on other emergency capacity building initiatives,” he added. He further said that the funds would be disbursed based on the quality of the proposals submitted to PSCBS and lead ministries and oversight organs will sign agreements with them directly for the work. He mentioned that during the last financial year 2010/2011, Rwf1.5 billion was spent on capacity building in the public sector but could not reveal the amount to be spent this year. Ends