Use of donor funds a concern

MINISTER for National Planning and Monitoring Richard Maru says the government will reform the systems of managing donor funding.
“We try to ensure that donors assist us by working with the national government to implement our plans in terms of their funding assistance to the projects in the country,” he said.
He said some donors funded programmes of their choice without consulting his department and went directly to non-government organisations.
“It’s all over the place at the moment in the way they want to do business with us. Many of them do not have confidence in our current systems to procure services and bring in other expertise to deliver programmes for us,” he said.
He said this was a major concern for the government.
“I’m going to call on all donors in the early part of the New Year to sit down and map out the process in which we engage with them, mobilise resources and work with them to implement our programmes,” he said.
Maru said there was a plan to reintroduce Overseas Aid and Economic Development, make it independent and use it to coordinate all the donor resources to fund the programmes.
“There’s so many countries and donors out there that we can reach. There are a lot of funds that we can mobilise,” Maru said.