EU will not give money to govt

via EU will not give money to govt – The Zimbabwean 18 March 2015

The European Union will not pay any money directly to the Zimbabwean government as it is yet to show progress in public finance management.

“Direct budget support, understood as support to the Treasury, is not envisaged in the near future,” said the EU delegation in response to written questions from The Zimbabwean this week.

The EU said government had not yet met its expectations for the resumption of direct budget support. “Regarding direct financial support to the Treasury, the EU has clear eligibility criteria for budget support. These criteria are not yet met.

“The EU is committed to assist the government in enhancing its public finance management and in implementing further economic reforms through a Trust Fund run by the World Bank,” said the western bloc.

It will conduct a mid-term review of its funding under the National Indicative Programme (NIP) in 2017 to evaluate Zimbabwe’s progress in public finance management and macro-economic stabilisation. Before that, “the EU cannot provide budget support to the Government of Zimbabwe.”

On November 1 last year, the European bloc resumed direct engagement with the Zimbabwean government after more than a decade of disengagement over President Robert Mugabe’s poor governance record.

“The expiration of appropriate measures has enabled the European Union, for the first time since 2002, to make multi-year aid commitments to Zimbabwe and to work with the Government under the framework of the Cotonou Agreement. This includes policy dialogue and the joint identification and formulation of sector-wide programmes focusing on the implementation of Government’s reform agenda,” noted the EU.

But it extended restrictive measures on Mugabe, his wife and a few other individuals earlier this year, meaning they are still not allowed to freely travel to European countries.

Last week the EU provided $1.28 million for the constitutional alignment process, but channelled the money through the Centre for Applied Legal Research (CALR) instead of the Ministry of Justice.

The CALR is a specialised legal centre that provides legal advisory services and has been working with the ministry and the office of the Attorney General. The constitutional reform disbursement was made under NIP which is funded from the European Development Fund (EDF) for the period 2014-2020.

Project implementation modalities are jointly decided by the government and the EU. These include calls for project proposals and negotiated procedures for NGOs, tenders for private sector companies managed by the government and programmes implemented by international organisations.

For the programmes to be approved in 2015 it has been agreed that most activities will continue to be implemented through international agencies (World Bank, UNDP, UNICEF, FAO, IOM) or NGOs.