Qatar’s ministries must now provide quarterly reports updating the Cabinet on their projects and plans, the Qatar News Agency (QNA) has reported.

The move comes months after the country’s new Emir signaled intentions to cut the fat in government by reducing redundancies, keeping a close watch on budgets and ensuring only qualified people serve in posts.

Last week, the Cabinet approved draft plans which give it the power to form permanent or temporary committees to study issues that the group is discussing.

As a result, it has asked ministries to submit reports every three months detailing, according to QNA, “their respective plans and programmes, and any obstacles impeding such implementation and the necessary best solutions.”

Transparency needed

Khalid Al Sayed, Editor-in-Chief of the Peninsula, praised the move in an editorial today, and urged the government to make such reports public. According to Al Sayed, ministries need to be more open with both the media and the general populace about their activities for accountability purposes:

“It is very important that these reports are not kept exclusively with the Cabinet because people need to evaluate and compare the performance of various ministries,” he writes.

“They would like to find out if we are on track to achieve our National Vision 2030, especially since some ministries haven’t yet published their strategy.”

Thoughts?