Nairobi — The African Development (AfDB) is to spend $453 million in 15 projects in Uganda over the next five years.

The bank is now seeking to improve the speed with which it processes grant and loan applications in the country.

Officials from the AfDB Uganda country office recently met officials from the government's Project Implementation Unit to review the performance over the past year and sort out the bottlenecks.

The bank's officials urged the government to train its employees on procurement and disbursement, and honour its part of the counterpart-funding bargain.

Government officials on their part urged the bank to increase the country office's threshold for approval of bids to $200,000.

Currently, AfDB's country offices' threshold is $50,000, and proposals above this amount are forwarded to the bank's headquarters in Tunis, Tunisia, for approval. It is however understood that bids approved locally by the country office are processed faster than those forwarded to Tunis.

Most proposals to the bank average $500,000. The bank's strategy is to gradually increase this threshold as respective field offices demonstrate competence. Benedict Kanu, AfDB's country operations officer in Kampala said, "We have demonstrated that we can handle more money and we are optimistic the bank will increase our threshold."

According to the bank's country office, disbursement rate in Uganda has increased by 10 per cent over the past year.

The increase in AfDB's disbursement rate to 23.9 per cent as at June, coupled with the status of ongoing projects it funds, means that long-standing problems in the bank's funded projects in the country are gradually being addressed.

Mukaila Ojelade, AfDB resident representative in Uganda said, "With a current disbursement rate of 23 per cent, our overall performance is considered satisfactory, but we can do still better."

Kayondho Kalanguka, commissioner for aid liaison in the Ministry of Finance Planning and Economic Development urged the AfDB country office to speed up project procedures.

He said, "Delayed procurement makes credit more expensive to the government in terms of continuous commitment charges that it has to meet over the credit period."

In reforming the group's structure last April, AfDB president Donald Kaberuka said that it would ensure that the bank is an efficient development and financial institution in Africa. He added that 60 per cent of its budget would go to operational activities in member countries.

The 15 AfDB-funded projects in Uganda are in agriculture, water and sanitation; social services, transport, and industry.

Up to 1600km of roads have already been built as part of this funding strategy and over 700km of feeder roads rehabilitated over the past two years in 10 districts of southwestern Uganda through the Area Based Agricultural Modernisation Programme.

The AfDB approved $13.2 million to co-fund this project in 2001, but implementation had to wait for parliamentary approval, which took two years.

The AfDB also funded the National Livestock Productivity Improvement Project aimed at increasing household incomes through increased livestock productivity and marketing in 29 districts in the country's cattle corridor by providing indigenous breeding cows and goats to farmers.

The government has an input by agreement in this project, but whereas it was required to provide Ush1.8 billion ($983,00) in counterpart funding in the past financial year, the Finance Ministry approved Ush837.7 million ($457,000) of which only Ush502 million ($274,000) was released.

In this financial year, the ministry approved Ush500 million (about $273,000) for the project less than the Ush1.6 billion ($874,000) required but the actual release is yet to be seen. Agricultural projects include the Northwest Smallholder Agricultural Development, Area-Based Agricultural Modernisation Programme, Fisheries Development, National Livestock Productivity Improvement and Farm Income Enhancement and Forestry Conservation.