The Director of the Common Development Fund (CDF) has warned District Mayors against overshooting the budget saying that much of the allocated budget has already been consumed. Addressing the all Mayors at Alpha Palace Hotel in Kigali, Letitia Nkunda said that 97 percent of their budget of 2008 to June 2009 has already been consumed. She said that the remaining three percent would not support new projects but rather finance them finish the projects they had started. Operating under the Ministry of Local Government, CDF is the financing arm of the Central Government to the districts, established to facilitate the decentralisation process. “The problem we have is the many projects in the pipeline and our budget is tight, we are advising you to finish what you started,” Nkunda told the mayors. She appreciated the Mayors who have promoted poverty alleviation and criticized others who contract ineffective entrepreneurs for the execution of projects which she said has led to developmental projects taking longer than the contracted time. “Every year the budget has been increasing but this time, the Ministry of Finance allocated us only 6 percent instead of 10 percent of the GDP,” Nkunda told reporters after her meeting with the mayors. According to the law, CDF is supposed to get 10 percent of the internally generated revenues to support rural development projects like constructing roads, bridges, electricity rollout and constructing modern markets. The fund has utilized 6.52 billion since it was launched in October 2002 and works with the developmental partners like European Union, Sweden and Holland. According to Nkunda, contracts with most of the partners have since expired the only valid one is that with the Dutch with which whom they have a five year contract. Ends
