ausaid, nzaid, jica, world bank, un and usaid

29.05.2014
Source: Post-Courier

Bougainville leaders, aid partners to coordinate development

By GORETHY KENNETH

THE Autonomous Bougainville Government and its development partners yesterday agreed to work together to address the challenges and opportunities for improved development coordination.
ABG President John Momis and acting Chief Secretary Chris Siriosi led a team to meet with Heads of Governments of Australia, New Zealand, Japan, World Bank, the United Nations and United States of America (AusAID, NZAID, JICA, World Bank, UN and USAID) to iron out and further strengthen the important issues pertaining to aid assistance on Bougainville.
The development forum comprising the donor partners and the ABG came up with recommendations which would set another benchmark for the region and its people and will be released today.
The development partners resolved that:

ABG priorities will drive development partner cooperation;
ABG will identify development partners comparative strengths in relation to ABG needs;
There will be two meetings every year prior to the Joint Supervisory Body meeting (JSB) and additional ones if necessary;
Coordination meetings will link with themed discussions;
Regular meetings will occur with the Chief Secretary;
They cooperate to provide consolidated information in a form that is useful to forward planning and monitoring progress against ABG priorities (and does not add additional overheads to ABG management);
ABG will identify gaps in development assistance and the highest priority needs within this;
ABG will use this information to develop ways of monitoring and evaluating the progress towards defined outcomes;
Their contributions will be identified in the National Government budget and ABG will draw on the is information, and;
Recognition of the coordinating role of the ABG Project Management Unit (PMU) as the coordination point for all infrastructure projects. President Momis said yesterday he was generally happy with the donor partners and their engagement on Bougainville, but said the Government was looking seriously at addressing the dependency syndrome, which the leaders were now trying to correct.


"Generally we are happy that we have policy that encourages development partners, we don’t want to control it but I think there should be better coordination," Momis said.
"Bougainville is now trying to develop a new culture by which people respect the Government…you know, we had a rebellion government any aid or anything that is against government might undermine the Government’s authority. We still don’t have the capacity, laws and structure, police, we don’t have the money and it is difficult for ABG to enforce so when we have uncoordinated aid it could create impression that these aid are coming in independently and outside of the ABG," he said.
"So there’s the dependency syndrome that we are trying to correct to fight dependency."
But he said he was happy with the donor partners despite revealing that the there could be more interaction from the Bougainville National MPs and their funds to help boost and go hand in hand with the development partners.