Kindu, May 19th, 2025 (CPA)- The joint World Bank- Public Finance Steering and Reform Committee (COREF) delegation has presented the ‘Encore’ project, which will help to maximize provincial revenues, to the executive of Maniema, in the Centre-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, official sources said on Monday. ‘The ‘Encore’ project, which has just been launched by the joint Central Bank-COREF delegation in the Moïse Mussa Kabwankubi amphitheater at Kindu University, is in line with revenue collection and expenditure management in Maniema province. Through this project, the World Bank and COREF will help the province not only to improve the main problems of financial and budgetary management, but also to train financial services staff in maximizing the province’s revenues’, said Godefroid Misenga, Executive Secretary of the Steering Committee for Public Finance Reforms.
‘We were motivated by the commitment, leadership and political will of his Excellency Moïse Mussa Kabwankubi, who wanted this project to be implemented throughout Maniema province, as it is in the four Kasai provinces. It’s a governance project that also aims to improve the main areas of public finance management; we’re going to help the province improve the level of revenue collection, because we’ve noticed that there are too many weaknesses. By improving budget management, mainly programming, budgeting and budget execution in public finance management, not forgetting public procurement, we will be able to provide the province with its own financial resources to meet the needs of the population,’ he added. For his part, Théophile Buledi, interim president of the Maniema Provincial Assembly, pointed out that ‘Maniema’s public finances are still operating in the traditional way, whereas the digitization of revenue and the proper management of expenditure remain the only foundation for the harmonious development of an entity that our province has not yet managed to put in place. We believe that with the advent of the “Encore” project, things will improve further for the well-being of the people. He called on the provincial authorities to show a high sense of responsibility in the implementation of this project in the province. In his welcome address, Governor Mussa Kabwankubi, who intends to make Maniema the champion province in the implementation of public finance reform among the seven (7) provinces concerned by the said project in the DRC, said he was pleased to have attended the reception ceremony of the joint World Bank-COREF mission for the implementation of the ‘Encore’ project in his jurisdiction: ‘It’s the result of contacts we’ve had in Kinshasa with World Bank officials since June 2024, even before our government was sworn in. Today we’re pleased that this mission is coming to our province, because once it’s over and we start implementing the Encore project here, we’ll have positive spin-offs for our province as part of the reform of public finances. The reform of public finances is an event for us, because it will enable us to have enough resources in the province to finance the development projects of our entity’, he maintained, before promising the faultless implementation of the project “again” in the Province of Maniema.