The impact of the Local Development Mining Fund (LDMF) on improving the living conditions of people in the communes of Soaw, Houndé and Dédougou was the subject of a public conference on 5 July 2023 in Ouagadougou. It took place at the occasion of the presentation of the analysis report by the NGO ORCADE.
A report by the Organisation for Capacity Reinforcement in Development (Organisation pour le renforcement des capacités de développement – ORCADE) looks at the sectors of intervention, the projects carried out, the amounts transferred to the communes and the difficulties in absorbing the Local Development Mining Fund (LDMF) in the communes of Soaw, Houndé and Dédougou.
In this analysis report, presented by consultant Rasmané Ouédraogo, education and health are the priority sectors, through the construction of educational, health, road and water infrastructures, and the acquisition of equipment. “The report shows that the three communes have used the money to invest in areas such as education, health, drinking water, sanitation and energy”, said Jonas Hien, ORCADE’s Director of Programmes. Souleymane Dianda, President of the Special Delegation (PDS) of the commune of Houndé, added to the achievements in commune. “With this fund, several schools, health and social promotion centres have been built,” said the PDS of Houndé.
Jonas Hien pointed out that the amounts vary from one commune to another according to the distribution criteria set out in the Mining Code and its implementing regulations. He pointed out that at the 6th distribution, the commune of Houndé had received 5 billion FCFA, 170 million FCFA for Dédougou and less than 100 million FCFA for Soaw. Jonas Hien also notes that in terms of statistics: “The LDMF’s average is 50 billion FCFA a year, because every six months at least 25 billion FCFA are distributed. If the security situation were stable, we think that in one year, we could go beyond 50 billion FCFA”, he added.
With regard to the difficulties encountered in using the LDMF, as illustrated in the report presented, the main ones are the complexity of the procedures for awarding and terminating public contracts; the COVID 19 pandemic with its restrictive measures; insecurity; soaring prices for building materials; insufficient resources to cover the needs requested, delays and irregularity in disbursements; the low absorption capacity of local authorities and institutional instability, the shortage and movement of staff, crises and blockages within local authorities (case of the Commune of Houndé).
Apart of the difficulties revealed by the report, ORCADE’s Director of Programmes was delighted with the relevance of the projects carried out by the three municipalities concerned by this study. He noted that the report showed that all the projects were useful. “The report says that with what has already been done, there has been an improvement in the provision of education, health care and drinking water”, said Jonas Hien. He also invited the communes to make good use of the recommendations in the report. The PDS of Houndé, for his part, called for the conditions for using the local development mining fund to be made more flexible.
As part of phase 2 of the programme to strengthen citizen participation and accountability in the management of public finances in Burkina Faso, the presentation of the report was attended by the PDS presidents, the respective departments, the dialogue and citizen awareness committees that monitor the use of resources, CSOs at national level, financial partner Oxfam and state structures such as the ITE, the ministry in charge of finance and the court of auditors.
Tiba Kassamse OUEDRAOGO
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