Donors Coordinate Funding Programmes

A country support strategy drafted by Kyrgyzstan’s principal donors will be a major boost to the government’s development targets for the next three years.



The five major donors – the Asian Development Bank, the Swiss Cooperation Office, Britain’s Department for International Development, the World Bank and the various United Nations agencies – published their Joint Country Support Strategy for Kyrgyzstan at the beginning of July.



The document sets out to coordinate foreign aid for the republic and is based around Kyrgyzstan’s own national development strategy for 2007-10, which the government approved in mid-May.



Carlos Zaccagnini, acting UN resident coordinator in Kyrgyzstan and the country head of the refugee agency UNHCR, says the main aim of the strategy is to increase aid effectiveness and learn from the past experience and problems.



“It is an attempt by donors to come to terms with the difficulties of providing aid, and it is built around a common aspiration to avoid duplication and ensure that the recipient country receives aid in the most efficient way possible without any waste,” said Zaccagnini.



Ashraf Malik, the head of the Asian Development Bank, ADB, office in Bishkek, told NBCentralAsia that “the support strategy briefly outlines how donor support is being shaped so as to achieve the goals set out in the country’s development strategy”.



The main emphasis is on achieving economic growth, controlling and combating corruption, social development and environmental protection.



Malik said a very comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system, fully financed by the ADB, is being established at both central and regional levels. This will allow corrective measures to be taken when this is required.



Local experts say they are certain that the donors’ plans to coordinate of aid will have a positive impact on achieving the development strategy’s aims, according to which Kyrgyzstan’s gross domestic product, GDP, should increase by eight per cent a year in real terms from 2007 to 2010, while GPD per capita should double from 429 to 872 dollars by the end of the period.



Sapar Orozbakov, director of the Bishkek Centre for Economic Analysis, says one of the main achievements of the donor strategy is that it has taken the government’s views into account in identifying the key economic sectors where assistance is to be concentrated.



The Kyrgyz government’s strategy is premised on bringing in more domestic and foreign investments, building up small and medium-sized businesses, energy, and developing the mining and agricultural processing industries.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)