Donors still assisting Malawi, says Minister

Malawi government spokesman Kondwani Nankhumwa has said donors are still  supporting the country despite freezing budgetary aid.

Nankhumwa said that regardless of the aid freeze to the Budget,  international cooperating partners are still funding other sectors like Agriculture, Health and Governance.

“Our bilateral donors feel we have to make some strict measures including other corrections as far as public finance management is concerned. Once we are done with that, the donors will revamp their direct budgetary support to Malawi,” said Nankhumwa.

He therefore quashed assertions on speculations that the absence of donor support, activities of the National Aids Commission (NAC) will come to a halt.

Nankhumwa said that, “Contrary to those assertions let me tell the nation that various donors are pumping in financial resources to NAC.”

He said for instance this financial year NAC will receive a total of K 58.4 billion  from various International donors and not excluding the Global fund and the United States of America.”

The Minister further said that it is not true that services to do with fighting against HIV/AIDS in the country will come to a halt, while elaborating that the allocation to NAC has actually been doubled.

Said Nankhumwa: “We therefore expect more activities from NAC in the areas of accessing ARVs, Voluntary Counselling and Testing plus all other activities that go together with the fight against the pandemic.”

When he unpacked the 2014/15 zero-aid budget amounting to K729 billion, Minister of Finance Goodall Gondwe did not include budgetary support from donors.

But he was quick to say that this did not mean the government of Malawi did not need donor support as discussions were still underway with the major development partners such as United States, European Union, United Kingdom, World Bank and African Development Bank among others.

Of these donors, EU, World Bank and African Development Bank have indicated a K43 billion injection into the 2014/15 budget.

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