By Abdiaziz Hassan NAIROBI, June 30 (Reuters) – Somalia’s finance minister hopes a deal with accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers to manage money given to the government will help the Horn of Africa nation rebuild its financial institutions.
“This is an international company. The donors and Somali government will monitor it, and I do not think there will be misuse of public funds,” Finance Minister Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden told Reuters in an interview late on Monday.
“In the long term, the Somali government will take control of its financial institutions.”
After nearly 20 years of conflict, the Somali economy is almost entirely informal and the administration lacks most of the structures needed to deal with donor inflows, let alone collect taxes.
The government controls just a few blocks of the capital Mogadishu and is battling a hardline Islamist insurgency which has links to al Qaeda and is bent on toppling President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s administration.
International donors pledged some $213 million at a conference in Belgium in April, but the government complains that only a small proportion has yet been delivered.
So much donor money has gone missing over the years in Somalia, there is a deep mistrust on the part of some countries pledging support about whether it will be spent properly.
Much of the money is meant to pay the government’s security forces, but diplomats say making sure wages go to the right people is proving difficult.
TRACKING THE MONEY
Under the deal struck this week, PricewaterhouseCoopers will hold and manage the pledged and allocated funds for development and capacity building — and track how the money is spent.
Aden said parliament had approved a $3.6 million monthly budget to fund the administration and was paying staff, the security forces and other agencies via the central bank.
“The central bank governor is working and the ministry will equip the bank with proper infrastructure and personnel so that we can play our part of restoring the government agencies,” Aden told Reuters during a visit to Nairobi.
Remittances from abroad, estimated at some $1 billion a year, are an important source of support for Somalis, and the country also has an influential telecoms sector. Aden hopes these, and other sectors, can be brought on board.
“Our budget is based on international aid, but we plan to collect levies and run the country relying on local money. The only source now of government income is mainly the port,” said Aden, 62, who is a former parliament speaker.
“The council of the ministers will discuss the role of the remittances and telecom sectors in a broader plan for restructuring private sector, and set laws for how best these organisations can be line with the national laws.”
Aden acknowledged that for now the government’s chief priority was security. The insurgents stepped up attacks in the capital in early May and a series of government offensives has failed to drive them from Mogadishu.
“Though there was long civil war, the Somali economy is in good position but needs to be organised in a modern market, and we hope to do that,” said Aden, who built an import/export business trading in livestock, food and building materials.
“It is worthless to wage war to run business. You can run large, multi-million businesses in your country by abiding local laws. This is a rich country, and resources we have are sufficient. There is no reason to fight,” he said.
“You can get more than you have in peace.”
(Editing by David Clarke and Chris Pizzey)
good job…good thinking….
lets hope the finance minister move would decrease unemployment….