Councils’ Budget Orientations Debates: Concrete Actions Needed

As Local and Regional Authorities prepare for the upcoming 2025 financial year, Budget Orientation Debates (BOD) have been trendy in many parts of the country during this last quarter of the year. This is because municipal councils and Regional Councils (Regional Assemblies in the case of the North West and South West Regions), are preparing the 2025 budgets for their institutions. The organization of the Budget Orientation Debates is in respect of Section 374(2) Law No. 2019/024 of 24 December, 2019 relating to the General Code of Regional and Local Authorities.  The legal instrument provides for two sessions of Budget Orientation Debates; one before voting a new budget and another during the mid-term evaluation of expenditure framework. 
According to economist,    Louis-Marie Kakdeu, in terms of budgetary policy, the DOB is the opportunity given to elected officials (and by extension to the people) to express their opinion on the major issues on the budget of their councils. To him, it is the time to fight to have the concerns of the people included in the budget. 
As councils and Regional Councils (Assemblies) prepare or have already adopted their budgets for the next financial year, Budget Orientation Debates have been held prior to the drafting of the financial projection for the upcoming year. The Budget Orientation Debate generally brings together various stakeholders of the community to reflect on the development needs and priorities of the municipality. The platform thus gives a rare opportunity to various stakeholders notably municipal councilors, traditional rulers, and civil society actors, among others, in a participatory approach to local development. It avails the citizens who constitute the tax payers, the opportunity to contribute in decision making as far as the development process is concerned. Budget Orientation Debates marks the second lap of the process to prepare the budget after the Town Hall Meetings which serves as the mid-year evaluation of execution of the current budget. All of these are provided by the law to put citizens in constant touch with the realities of the council execution of the development roadmap. In fact, the process for the preparation of the budget is to make the financial instrument mature before the budget is eventually voted. That is why proposals for development projects are made in a participatory approach with councilors, community leaders proposing what they see as development priorities in their respective neigbourhoods. When all of these ideas are matured, based on the available financial resources, the local authorities through the municipal and Regional Councils take into consideration priority projects. The important exercise of citizen participation to local development gives them a sense of belonging as they contribute to the smooth running of the affairs of the municipality in a result-based management approach. 
The approach is quite laudable as it involves all and sundry in the day-to-day development process of the municipality. It is also momentous because the citizens already have an idea of the development projects earmarked by the decentr...