Finance Minister confirms release of frozen donor funding to Ministry of Health

In a television interview this week (13/12/09) on the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation television channel, Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane (Minister of Finance and National Planning) confirmed that agreement had been reached to trigger the release of frozen donor funds. He also confirmed that the frozen funds have now been released, thereby considerably easing the pressure on available resources. He thanked the donor community for this and especially the two donors (that froze funds) for their responsiveness.

The Minister also emphasized that measures have been put in place to minimise the chances of such a scandal happening in future, either with donor funds or available national tax revenue. These measures include governance arrangements, some addressing ‘human factors’. For example, when discussing revised accountability mechanisms the Minister mentioned “greater reliance on electronic procedures in processing the release and utilization of public funds”. The Minister emphasized that these new and revised governance arrangements will apply across all Ministries, not just to the Ministry of Health, as well as to all categories of public funds – whether local tax money or foreign aid money.

Changing attitudes on both sides

In a separate development, at a meeting an issue was tabled to discuss and decide whether it was a good idea to outsource some MoH services to the private sector due to unsatisfactory performance (inefficiency, delays, lack of timeliness and general dissatisfaction with the service from consumers).

In the discussion that ensued, a donor representative made several points against outsourcing.  The donor representative argued that (i) it would be perceived as part of the corruption scandal when it was not, (ii) it was the duty of the partnership to strengthen weaknesses in the health system rather than avoid these by turning to outsourcing, and (iii) it is important to recognize that good governance arrangements have since been worked out concerning financial issues.  The donor representative expressed the opinion that it would be interesting to maintain the status quo and see how effectively these new governance arrangements address the problems of concern. Eventually it was decided to consider more than one alternative and let the decision take place at a higher level.