Malawi’s major donors under the Common Approach to Budget Support (Cabs) on Wednesday hailed Malawi’s progress in addressing the Capital Hill cashgate, but said regaining donor confidence in the country’s public finance management system will take time.
Cabs co-chairperson Sarah Sanyahumbi, who is also head of the British Department for International Department (DfID) in Malawi, said this at Capital Hill in Lilongwe during a wrap-up Cabs review meeting.
She said: “Once you lose confidence, restoring confidence and strengthening the system takes time… Yes, the government is doing a good job so far, but there is a far way to go and will take a bit of time simply to restore the confidence and take necessary steps to strengthen the [Ifmis] system.”
Sanyahumbi said currently, investigations into the cashgate are in early stages and that results from the forensic audit on the Integrated Financial Management Information System (Ifmis) will only be out in January 2014, adding that significant improvements would only be visible in March next year.
But the DfID Malawi boss said donors have been participating in weekly meetings of the Government Action Plan where, she said, initial steps on addressing cashgate have been shown.
She also reiterated that despite withholding budget support, donors under Cabs continue to assist Malawi in other sectors such as health and education.
According to Sanyahumbi, over the past month, government and Cabs have been working on an Extraordinary Performance Assessment Framework (Epaf) which, she said, has now been agreed to by both parties.
She said the framework seeks to address the causes of massive looting of public resources in government and is focused on short-term and medium-term measures.
Sanyahumbi explained that the successful implementation of the Epaf, which was made public on Wednesday, will be an important step in restoring confidence in government’s management of public finance.
On his part, Minister of Finance Maxwell Mkwezalamba said although donors have delayed budget support, there is evidence on the ground that they continue to help Malawi though not through the government system.
He also assured the donors that government is committed to undertaking measures aimed at strengthening the public finance management system by implementing the Government Action Plan on cashgate.
“I am sure we should see things moving in the right direction after the IMF meeting in January and Cabs meeting in March,” he said.
