KINGSTON, Jamaica – The Jamaican Government has benefited from more than $7.5 billion in development support from the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) for the four-year period January 2007 to 2011.
The five key areas to be addressed are education, HIV/AIDS, poverty and the environment, health and justice, peace and security. The money will be allocated through the relevant Ministries.
Minister of Finance and Planning, Omar Davies, in his remarks at the signing ceremony held Tuesday, October 31st at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, noted that the areas of focus mirrored the government’s development imperatives.
“There must be a willingness to adjust our programs and expenditure in line with social circumstances,” he added.
Meanwhile, United Nations Resident Coordinator, Juan Carlos Espinola, implored recipient Ministries to do consistent follow-up to ensure the effectiveness of the programs undertaken. He said the agreement would foster meaningful participation by stakeholders in their own development.
While commending the government on reducing poverty to 14.8 per cent, the UN Coordinator indicated that initiatives under the framework agreement would help to reduce the number even further.
“This is major in overall terms, but still that 14.8 per cent means that between 350,000 to 370,000 people in Jamaica are still facing the issue of poverty and they are very much in pockets [like] inner-city and rural areas,” which would be targeted under the program, he stated.
Meanwhile, Dr. Wesley Hughes, Director General of the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), informed that the document for the agreement, which took over a year to prepare, represented “the culmination of several months of intense discussion, consultation and other forms of communication with non-governmental organizations, community-based organizations and other development partners”.
Dr. Hughes informed that the development assistance came after the UN donor agencies conducted a Common Country Assessment (CCA) of the national development situation, which was then harmonized with the Jamaican Government’s Medium Term Framework, to determine the areas of priority.
According to the PIOJ head, “since 1996, several working groups of the multinational development banks have been seeking to implement, at the request from the (Jamaican) Development Assistance Committee, the harmonization of operational policies and procedures. In 2002 Jamaica agreed to become one of three pilot countries, along with Vietnam and Ethiopia, for the harmonization of policies in areas of financial management and audit, procurement, environmental and social safeguards.”
Dr. Hughes pointed out that the synchronized manner in which the priority areas would be addressed would be more efficient, as transaction costs would be minimized.
