Moldovan cabinet establishes more efficient mechanism of foreign assistance's coordination, management

Chisinau, 13 April /MOLDPRES/ - The resources provided by foreign donors and creditors will be used more efficiently and the impact of the foreign assistance on Moldova’s development will be enhanced. The government today approved a regulation on the institutional framework and mechanism of coordination and management of the foreign assistance.

Under the project, the Finance Ministry was nominated as national authority of coordination of the foreign assistance, which will fulfill the role of single contact/control point in the relation with foreign development partners and public authorities on proposals of projects/programmes on foreign assistance, Finance Minister Octavian Armasu said.  

Armasu noted that the project was aimed at ensuring an efficient use of resources available to maximize the impact of the foreign assistance on Moldova’s development, coherence and complementariness between instruments provided by the community of donors/creditors and Moldova’s development needs. Also, ensuring a coordinated support for fulfilling the commitments taken before the international community and especially before the European Union, as well as of a sustainable financial management of the foreign assistance.   

From the institutional viewpoint, the goal of the project is to remove bureaucratic obstacles which may procrastinate the launch of new projects/programmes, as well as to facilitate the decisions concerning the extension, restructuring and/or suspension of projects/programmes of foreign assistance.   

At the same time, the document provides for the exclusion of the Inter-ministerial Committee on Strategic Planning from the process of coordinating the foreign assistance, for reasons that the committee is made up of cabinet members and the doubling of decision-making bodies is not opportune. The sectoral councils have been also excluded from the process of coordinating the foreign assistance. Experience has proved that these councils were not functional, the presence at the meetings was not fully ensured, the best proposals on financing were not turned to account.

The Finance Ministry, in its capacity of national authority for coordinating the foreign assistance, is to work out an operational guide on the coordination and management of the foreign assistance, due to include technical aspects of this process.  

(Reporter V. Bercu, editor L. Alcaza)