Overview of the Ministry

The Ministry of Planning and Development is the arm of Government centrally responsible for the country’s medium and long-term economic policy planning, development and monitoring, national human development, national manpower planning, national statistics, public sector investment programming, land use planning and urban development, technical cooperation, and population and development.  These functions serve as important instruments of sustainable development policy, resource mobilization, coordinated economic management, national human development, and urban and regional development.  The Minister of Planning and Development has served as the country’s Governor on the Boards of major Multi-lateral Financial Institutions.

The Government has conventionally relied on national development planning as an important instrument to guide the process of economic management as well as to provide the framework for sustainable growth and balanced development.  The country’s recognition that the pace and quality of development over the years, particularly regarding the persistence of certain structural problems, the lack of balanced regional development, the incidence of poverty and the existence of unsustainable forms of development, has prompted changes to the institutional framework in an effort to improve the effectiveness of the planning function.

More recently, the planning process has been influenced by the need to be more responsive to the dynamics of the global economy, a closely integrated global community, trade and currency liberalization, rapid changes in Information and Communications Technology, aggressive social, economic and cultural changes and to the strong national and international commitment to the alleviation of poverty and the focus on HIV/AIDS as a developmental issue.  National development planning must seek to address these new challenges if the country is to advance effectively along the pathway to becoming a more developed country at least by the year 2020.