REM Rapport Annuel No. 1 OIF Congo Brazzaville - Forests Monitor

CONCLUSIONS
RECOMMENDATIONS
B. Procedures for Allocating Forest Areas
Allocation of the Enyellé Ibenga FMU
Application dossiers submitted for the
development of the Enyellé‐Ibenga FMU
were all incomplete. On this subject, it is
appropriate to recall the role of the
Departmental Directors of Forest Economy
in establishing dossiers
Rating sheets being transmitted without
the Technical Committee’s notes, combined
with the delay in transmitting the dossiers
and the new nature of the rating system,
did not allow all of the members of the
Forest Commission to be prepared for the
review process.
Furthermore, it appeared the allocation
review meeting focused primarily on
reading the ratings attributed by the
Technical Committee, without the ratings
having been discussed by the other
members of the Forest Commission.
These circumstances led to a situation in
which the Forest Commission was
prevented from playing its role.
The Million Well Company’s agreement for
the allocation of the Enyéllé‐Ibenga FMU
was signed by the MEF without taking into
account requests from the Forest
Commission to transmit the documents
needed for negotiations to continue.
Since the various stages leading to the
signature of the agreement were not
known, REM cannot confirm a proper
procedure was followed.
Despite the progress made by the Forest
Administration in increasing transparency,
including the adoption of a rating system,
the observations herein have revealed
several irregularities in the FMU allocation
process (from the approval of the
application to the signature of the
agreement).
The DDEFs should henceforth ensure that they provide
candidates with all the information they need to build their
dossiers before transmitting the dossiers to the DGEF with a
reasoned opinion. It would be desirable that the DGEF send all
the DDEFs a service memo on this subject.
Furthermore, in the case that application dossiers are
submitted directly to the central administration (Cabinet,
DGEF), they should be re‐dispatched to the DDEFs concerned
for verification.
In regard to the Technical Committee:
- The dossiers should be transmitted to the other members
of the Forest Commission on time.
- The rating sheets given to the other members of the Forest
Commission should be accompanied by the Technical
Committee’s ratings for each of the criteria used. On this
point, REM suggests that a section on the ratings allocated
by the technical committee be added to the rating sheet.
- The results of any investigations into the candidates’
characters and/or of the verification of their capacities
should be included with the dossiers transmitted to the
members of the Forest Commission.
At the next Forest Commission meeting, there should be greater
participation by the members in evaluating the dossiers,
particularly by examining the ratings established by the
Technical Committee.
In the future, the decision should be made to suspend all
negotiations intended to lead to the signature of an agreement
if the applicant whose dossier was approved with conditions
has not provided the required documents.
For future calls for tender, non‐compliance with the procedure
leading to signature of an agreement should be met with
suspensions related to: payment of the bank guarantee; start of
negotiations on agreement provisions; and signature of an
establishment agreement.
With the aim of increasing the transparency and
competitiveness of the process, regulations defining the
modalities for selecting candidates and allocating logging
permits should be adopted in line with the World Bank’s
conclusions.
It would be desirable to wait until such regulations have been
adopted before issuing any new calls for tender for the
development of forest management units or logging units.
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