Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC) chairman Chandra Jayaratne in a letter to prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe titled ‘Post Implementation Reviews (PIR) requests that the action plan strategies of the government due to be published later this year, makes specific reference to the levels of project expenditures above which PIRs will be carried out effective from next year.

Following are excerpts of this letter. "We refer you to the submission of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce titled, "Strategies for Growth Leveraging the Private Sector". In section 4.5 titled "Accountability Enhancements and Corruption Control", we recommended that

Quote: Introduce a process for all legal reforms, new legislation and allocation of national resources in excess of a specified amount for project or capital expenditure, to be accompanied by national economic benefit assessments and be reviewed by the parliamentary consultative committees. All such assessments and associated projects to be subject to post implementation reviews held before the relevant consultative committees,

Following the recently concluded Sri Lanka Development Forum, the CCC recommended a Post Audit Process as a way forward to implement these proposals for good governance.

The Post Implementation Reviews (PIR), sometimes referred to as Post Audit Reviews (PARs) are usually carried out by a multi-disciplinary team of professionals, generally at the end of six and 18/24 months following the completion of significant projects or significant capital/revenue expenditure commitments. These reviews address many areas, including the validation whether.

The original project objectives have been realised or are likely to be realised within the set time frames initially agreed; the project/expenditure commitments were carried out according to the original proposal, budget and within specified cost allocations, work specifications and set time table.

The project was well managed, optimising resources and assuring optimum economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the use of resources; effective pre-planning proceses strategy development, establishing milestones, cost targets were in place; and the project effectively networked with all other project partners in executing the project, timely and useful management information was available during the project management for effective decision making in the project management, effective decision management processes and corrective action management initiatives were in place and embedded strategies, systems, operating guidelines were in place for future continuity realisation of set long term objectives. The learning points for follow-up action and project planning were documented and disseminated, the achievement of national economic benefits planned for in the project were reviewed and further action strategies to improve the long-term sustainable national economic value addition options are available.

We believe that the professional capacity for undertaking effective PIR may not be available in Sri Lanka, with the exception of a few large private sector companies and private sector professional firms. It may therefore be necessary for the Government to seek a line of technical support from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to facilitate professional capacity building in this area.

We believe that private sector organisations, supported by professional firms will develop the capability to support Government initiatives with PIR and that opportunities will emerge in the area of conducting independent PIR.

The CCC recommends that the policy development and implementation ministry makes arrangements to develop the guidelines and framework covering PIR processes in the public sector. The Ministry should also be empowered to begin establishing network partisanship with the private sector seeking professional implementation support.

We recommended that the action plan strategies of the Government under your leadership, due to be published later this year, makes specific reference to the levels of project expenditures above which PIR will be carried out effective from next year."