Norwegian envoy cautions Tanzania on aid provision

02 July 2009, The Citizen
URL: http://thecitizen.co.tz/newe.php?id=13515

Dar es Salaam:  Tanzania has been cautioned that disbursements of General Budget Support (GBS) depend on her continued compliance with the underlying principles of the Partnership Framework Memorandum, including the fight against corruption.

The Norwegian ambassador to Tanzania, Mr Jon Lomoy sounded the caution in Dar e s Salaam yesterday when authorising the release of Norwegian kroner 220 million (equal to Sh46 billion) in General Budget Support (GBS) to Tanzania. The money is for implementation of the Poverty Reduction Strategy, known in its Kiswahili acronym as Mkukuta.

This is the first of two planned disbursements for the financial year 2009/10, according to a statement from the Norwegian embassy in Dar es Salaam. It said the total Norwegian GBS contribution will be Norwegian kroner 265 million.   According to the statement, the amount is roughly equal to the cost of acquiring 12 million elementary school text books or six million mosquito nets.

"We are happy to be in a position to frontload the disbursement of General Budget Support this financial year by disbursing roughly 85 per cent of the GBS commitment on the first day of the new financial year," the Norwegian Ambassador to Tanzania, Mr Jon Lomoy, said as he authorised the release of the financial support.

He said they believed that their move would contribute to making the GBS a reliable and predictable financing instrument for implementation of Mkukuta. He pointed to the progress that Tanzania has made in the fight against corruption over the last year, but underlined that it still has a long way to go.  The next major evaluation of the progress in implementing the Mkukuta and the fight against corruption will take place at the GBS Annual Review later this year.

Norway, other development partners and Tanzania will carefully scrutinise the progress made at this annual review.