A major initiative launched by His Royal Highness Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa to promote good governance will be overseen by the country's deputy premiers.

They have been tasked to promote performance and ensure low-risk execution of government projects.

The initiative aims to deal with remarks featuring in the recent National Financial and Administrative Audit Court report.

'The government performance will undergo major changes, regarding auditing and control procedures, to track down and combat squandering of public money,' HRH the Premier said in a statement following the Cabinet meeting.

He stressed the Government's resolve to motivate departments and institutions to enhance their performance, optimize available resources and ensure the accuracy of their financial and accounting data.

He pledged more efforts to improve government's performance and, enforce auditing tools at ministries and government departments, vowing to pre-empt 'unprogrammed irregularities' to be pre-empted.

'Squandering public money is tantamount to squandering responsibility itself< he said, vowing to spare no effort to protect and channel resources to serve allocated purposes.

'There is no going back on determination to correct the process and embark on sound construction', he vowed.

'The initiative aims to boost the role of the government project management directorate, an affiliate of the Finance Ministry, in controlling recurrent spending, and project budgeting', he said in a statement following the weekly Cabinet meeting.

'The government performance will undergo major changes, regarding auditing and control procedures, to track down and combat public money squandering'.

The initiative will also crackdown on overspending and promote strict commitment to allocated project budgets.

'The Government is resolved to overhaul self-auditing procedures to preserve national achievements', he said, hailing landmark development strides in the era of His Majesty King Hamad.

Partnership with all parties will be promoted to reconsider irregularities in due time and improve the management of recurrent spending.

'It is high time we worked as a team to achieve all that Bahrain people aspire to', he said.

'By working together, we will reap the dividends of this initiative which has been drawn up to be implemented', he said.

Minister of State for Defence Affairs Lieutenant General Dr Shaikh Mohammed bin Abdulla Al Khalifa and Minister of State for Implementation Mohammed Al Mutawa will also draw up a detailed workplan and analyse dysfunctional aspects of government recurrent spending, in line with the comments in the report.

The Bahrain Excellence Centre will measure the benchmarks of government performance. It will issue reports measuring performances and suggest improvements.-TradeArabia News Service