NGOs to continue monitoring HIPC fund spending

Zambian NGOs will continue to track the use of funds saved under the Highly-Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, despite the government's suspension of an independent monitoring team. Before its suspension last month, the HIPC Tracking and Monitoring Team, established by the ministry of finance in 2001, identified several alleged cases of abuse of funds involving top civil servants. The team's last report, released in February this year, dealt with investigations into disbursements made in the Copperbelt and Northern provinces, and claimed that thousands of [US] dollars of HIPC funds had been spent on fuel, festivals and political celebrations. As a "least-developed" country that is implementing economic reforms, Zambia qualifies for the HIPC debt-reduction programme of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Jack Jones Zulu of the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection, one of eight members on the monitoring team, said the four NGOs who had also been members "are now taking steps to set up our own monitoring mechanism, if we want to ensure that the poor benefit from the funds". Jones claimed that "the Zambian authorities were getting increasingly uncomfortable with our reports". Chileshe Kandeta, a spokesperson for the Zambian finance ministry, confirmed to IRIN that the team had been suspended, but was unable to offer an explanation. "When we asked for the reason for the team's suspension, we were told that there was no legal basis for its existence, and that we had to go as part of the cost-cutting exercise, as there were four government bodies which were monitoring the disbursement of the HIPC funds," Zulu said. The four government structures also monitoring HIPC funds are the offices of the auditor-general and the attorney-general, and the finance ministry's internal audit committee and planning departments. "The point is, we [the independent monitoring team] were established because it was a condition by the IMF that an independent body monitor the disbursement of the funds. The four other bodies that monitor the fund are not independent - how can the government monitor itself? We have argued that, why does the government not dissolve at least two of the other bodies as part of its cost-cutting exercise?" Zulu remarked. He said the NGO members "feel that perhaps we should not have accepted the positions in the team to begin with, as it was being established by the government, who reserves the right to dissolve it". According to Minister of Finance Ng'andu Magande, at the end of 2002 the country had saved around US $97 million as a result of HIPC, of which about $21 million had been spent, as required, on social welfare programmes.