Malawi sign $29m financial pact with African Development Bank

Malawi and the African Development Bank (AfDB) on Tuesday officially signed a financial agreement of $29million as a sector budget support for the protection of basic social services.

Minister of Finance Goodall Gondwe said the funds are part of the pledge the bank made to provide such support to Malawi.

“The funds provided will go a long way in assisting Malawi to improve and protect the basic social services,” he said.

The funds will go to the health, education and social protection sectors.

According to Gondwe the other funds has been allocated to social protection program where support will be provided for the strengthening of targeting and coordination mechanism through the introduction of a unified registry for all the safety-net programmes that government is implementing.

“This will address the problem of duplication and wastage of resources as the different safety-net programmes tend to target the same people, the resources will also be used to improve monitoring and evaluation of the safety-net programmes,” said Gondwe.

The AfDB Resident Representative Andrew Mwaba said the bank understands Malawi’s difficulties in financing its budget hence the response by providing a sector budget support in the areas of health, education and social protection.

“We have noted that the Government is making efforts to finance the budget and meet these fiscal challenges from its resources, but has still expressed the need for financial support from development partners to ensure that the vulnerable groups are not excluded from accessing basic services especially in health and education,” he explained.

He said the Banks support has been prepared as a ring fenced operation to selected activities in the social sectors. Resources will be disbursed in special accounts for access by beneficiary Ministries, Departments and other agencies providing basic services in health and education.

 

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