A Few weeks ago, Somaliland government released a small booklet which contains a list of projects that will be financed through these funds, the amount of budget allocated for each project, and the government responsible for implementing the project.
We have evaluated the quality of these projects in terms of the following criteria:
Selection of government implementing agency;
Distribution of projects and fund beneficiaries per region;
Developmental impact of the project (value for the money for selected communities;
4. Project governance (transparency with respect to financial control, accountability, contractor selection, etc.)
In this article, we offer you some overall observations about these issues. In succeeding articles, we will focus on specific projects and provide you details about the positive and negative aspects of each project.
OVERALL SUMARY OF OUR OBSERVATION
FACTS
In ascending order, here is the government agencies selected to administer portions of the funds:
Ministry of Agriculture. 2,056,896 USD
Ministry of Environment and Rural Development. $ 2, 316, 000 USD
3. Somaliland Road Authority (SDR) $ 4, 000, 000 USD
4. Hargeisa Water Agency. $ 4,000, 000 USD
5. Ministry of Water Resources. $ 4,540, 00 USD
6. Ministry of Livestock. $ 4, 568, 828 USD
7. Ministry of National Planning and Developmen. $ 1, 677, 250 USD
8. Ministry of Labour and Social affairs in partnership with the Ministry of Youth, Sport & Tourism. $ 2, 000, 000 USD
OUR COMMENTS
As far as we know, the parliament, government branch responsible for appropriation and oversight of public funds, had no input on project selection and budgets;
Budgets released to the public are not itemized per project activity. Selected ministries were allocated a lump sum of few million dollars each to be spent on some vague set of generalized activities, for example: training, community committees and the like.
Somaliland Road Authority will receive 6.5 Million Dollars of the fund to “rehabilitate 20 Kms of paved road and reconstruct a bridge”. There is no accounting of a 15 Million Dollars donated by the UAE and earmarked for the same sections of this road;
This agency comes under the control of the Presidency. It is not clear who is in charge of it. In the past, SDR was part of the Ministry of Public Works. The division was transferred to the presidency;
5. Recipient agencies have a common factor, a special relationship with power centers in the presidency.
These are our general observations. Please stay tuned for future articles as we examine the details of each project and implementing agencies.
By. Arta Abyan.
Arta.abyan@yahoo.com Stay tuned.