Voici une histoire que j'ai écrite pour les medias. Nick Long (28/01/23) Version française à suivre. UNDP has questionnaire to answer in Congo
A development programme which the United Nations is helping to implement in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on inflated building costs, a research centre has warned.
In a report published on Thursday, the Congo based Centre for Research into Public Finance and Local Development (CREFDL), estimates that overbilling by contractors accounts for $334 million of the $511 million already released for a government infrastructure programme targeting rural areas of the DRC.
Lack of infrastructure is one of the main reasons why two thirds of the DRC’s rural population are living on less than $1.25 a day and only 1% have access to electricity, according to the UN.
$300 million of the money released for the programme was made available by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in special drawing rights, (zero interest rate loans), and the rest is from the government’s own funds. A diplomatic source said the IMF had insisted that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) should be among the implementing agencies overseeing how the $300 million was spent.
The UNDP’s involvement, along with two other implementing agencies (both Congolese), has repeatedly been cited by the government as a reassuring sign that the so-called Local Development Programme for the 145 Territories (PDL-145T) would not share the fate of so many other projects in the financial quicksands of the DRC.
Last year the then planning minister Christian Mwando Nsimba, whose staff designed the PDL-145T, with advice from UNDP, told media :
“UNDP’s internal controls are very strict so that will allow things to go correctly.”
Other aid workers were doubtful about this, one of them commenting:
“UNDP has been virtually nationalised in the DRC.”
Last Thursday Mwando (who resigned from the government last month), said he thought CREFDL’s estimates of overbilling were “a bit too much”.
“The programme was based on cost estimates agreed with UNDP and two national agencies BCECO and CFEF,” he said. “Those three agencies put out the tenders after making calculations for each site. I don’t think UNDP is ready to do overbilling.
“The estimates were based on what’s been done before,” he added.
Budgeted at $1.6 billion, the PDL-145T was announced in late 2021 and contracts to the value of $172 million are known to have been awarded so far, according to the whistle blowers at CREFDL. During its first phase, in the run up to presidential elections slated for December 2023, the programme is to concentrate on building and repairing schools, health centres, and government buildings across the country.
Mwando said on Thursday that he would have preferred the PDL to concentrate on repairing rural roads in the first phase, as this was the priority identified in most consultations in rural areas, but he had been overruled by the ministry of finance.
Citizens’ groups have been warning for months that the programme is being hijacked by those in power who are using it for political patronage, steering contracts towards their followers, most of whom lack the capacity to repair roads but can organise villagers to build their own schools, and mobilise votes.
The CREFDL report estimates that the programme’s building costs have been inflated by 300% in some cases.
CREFDL’s spokesman, Olivier Masini, said: “It’s normal for infrastructure projects to be over billed in this country, but this programme is going too far. In 2016 the government set a maximum of $130,000 for a six classroom school plus a school office, when in reality they can normally be built for about $80,000. The PDL planners budgeted $257,000 as the average unit cost for that size of school, and on the ground they’re awarding contracts to build the same model for up to $455,000.”
It’s the same story with the health centres and administrative buildings, he added.
Research by other experts suggests that CREFDL’s estimates of overbilling are if anything on the low side. A 2015 study of school building in eastern Congo quotes a World Bank sponsored guidebook, from 2010, that put the cost of a three classroom block with an expected life of 30 years, built in a hard to access area, at between $16,500 and $27,000.
Asked for his opinion on the PDL estimate of $257,000 for a primary school, the study’s author, Dr Cyril Owen Brandt, said this was “definitely way too high for the types of school the government has usually built.”
The programme’s estimate for building and equipping a health centre – $218,000 – is also much higher than previous costs.
In 2012, a UK government funded programme proposed to build health centres in the DRC for $40,000 on average, using easily replaceable materials. The DRC health ministry preferred to import Chinese bamboo as a building material, and the unit cost rose to $100,000.
UNDP is handling procurement for the PDL in roughly a third of the country. Approached on Friday for its reaction to the CREFDL’s report, the UN agency had not responded at the time of going to press.
Last November UNDP’s deputy resident representative DRC, Rokya Ye Dieng, told media that UNDP had received $107 million for the programme, of which 9% had been disbursed. The agency had selected only one contractor but would soon be signing up more, she said.
“All estimates can be under or over estimates,” Rokya said. “The government has now released money that allows for feasibility studies at each site to get accurate costings. Engineers have gone to all the territories and done a review of feasibility studies and updated the costs.”
Did the engineers find the original estimates were exaggerated, she was asked?
“I don’t have those details,” she said, “because that is confidential information.”
CREFDL’s spokesman Masini said on Friday he had sent all three implementing agencies questionnaires about the tendering process and contracts awarded.
“BCECO and CFEF gave us details of the contracts but UNDP didn’t,” he said. “UNDP said we don’t have the right to investigate a procurement process granted to them by the state.
“We don’t want UNDP to pull out of this programme,” he added. “We want them to get on with recruiting people to monitor the work on the ground. It’s not too late. The government could order a reduction in costs. But there has to be more citizen monitoring or the government will do whatever it likes.”