Brussels, 07/08/2003 (Agence Europe) - In its special report No.8/2003 that has just been published in the Official Journal C 181 on 31 July, the Court of Auditors points to the level of problems involved in carrying out the infrastructure work funded by the European Development Fund (EDF) in the framework of the ACP-EU partnership agreement.
The report states that, "The weaknesses that have been located…regularly affect the cost of work in proportions that are too high, indeed sometimes with regard to their durability. Although a number of problems exist in executing the work in different market, the accumulated experience accumulated does not end up with the acquisition of sectoral expertise for benefiting the whole of the work funded by the EDF, which led to the intervention of the Commission's sectoral services to remove par of its added value". The report also highlights the important aspect of development cooperation: end of 2002, payments carried out by the Commission in this work represented 16% of the 6th, 7th and 8th EDF and bordered on EUR 3.2 bio.
Out of this total, the Court examined 30 markets representing EUR 525 million. Out of these 30 markets, only twelve were carried out as planned. In six cases, conception of the work was considerably modified after the contracts had been signed with consequences on the technical and financial side of things. In twelve other cases, it was the quantity or the level of quality of the work, sometimes both, which were lowered. Therefore in Ethiopia, the length of time for finishing the Addis Ababa-Jima road increased from 36 to 73 months and the price increased by 61%: most of the work had still not been started in June 2002 although the contract was signed in March 1999. In Madagascar, buildings from the construction and equipment project for seven provincial abattoirs were not finished and have not been used: the national administration is planning on using them in another way or selling them to private operators. Renewal of the national 4 road involved revision of the work following conclusion of the contract leading to the length of time of the work increasing from 18-44 months and the price increasing by more than 70%. According to the Court, in the Cameroon, the Youndé - Ayos road deteriorated very quickly after being brought into service and had to be closed to heavy goods lorries in 1995 and 1996: this failure can be combined with the carriageway being undersized and the already low specifications not being respected. In Jamaica, the instability of the edges led to the collapse of a section of road in May 2001 and the closure for three months of a section of renewed road: the life span and profitability of the work have also been affected by reductions in the thickness of the road surfaces during its execution in an effort to achieve illusory economies. With regard to waste water drainage system in Ocho Rios and Negril, incomplete, fragile or reduced capacity work were finally agreed t: the different work was finished in mid-1999 after three years of extensions while the public procurement market increased by 36%. In Tanzania, the pillars supporting the quays in the Port of Zanzibar suffered from corrosion, endangering the solidity of the work carried out. This was detected in 1993 but technical shortcomings had still not been satisfactorily corrected, notes the Court, which also mentions the original case of the Beroua-Garoua Boulaï road in the Cameroon, where they had quite simply omitted bitumen (which is an essential ingredient in this kind of work, remarked ironically the Court) in the price of the contract.