E-Promis will enable Government to gauge mega projects

Director of  Monetary and Evaluation Department at the Ministry of Statistics and Planning Samson Machuka

The Government is rolling out a monitoring and evaluation system that will make it easy to evaluate mega infrastructure projects.

The system, dubbed E-Promis, will now enable the Government to gauge whether capital-intensive projects are of any monetary value to the country or not.

The Director of the Monetary and Evaluation Department at the Ministry of Statistics and Planning Samson Machuka said the new system would save taxpayers billions of shillings.

“Previously, the Monitoring and Evaluation Department never appraised major mega projects, including the Thika Superhighway and the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) owing to turf wars, inadequate personnel and low funding, but with this new system that evaluates if the cost of the project is in tandem with the returns from that project, then we could be heading in the right direction,” said Dr Machuka in an interview.

A recent forum hosted by the Africa Development Bank (AfDB) concluded that most Kenyans were unaware of how key infrastructural projects contributed to their economic well-being.

He said he hoped MPs will pass a recommendation committing one per cent of the development budget to monitoring and evaluating infrastructural projects.

Dr Machuka also hopes the department can transform from “just another policy think-tank” to an impact-based department.