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PARPA/PRSP and poverty reduction in Mozambique: Challenges to national and international agents
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7. Is PARPA an imposed conditionality or an opportunity for development?
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We have argued along the paper that deadlines for HIPC initiative for external debt relief /cancellation have prevented eventual more comprehensive consultation to partners and a better revised and refined final draft of PARPA.
Hence we were left with a deficit in the consultation process and strategy and limited participation of non-governmental partners in the process of monitoring and evaluation. Paradoxically, these are the points of entry along with information dissemination with a crucial role in involvement and participation of all partners as stakeholders and the beneficiaries in their development process.
NegrРіo argues in his paper that conditionalities associated with dominant neo-liberal thinking are implicit in PARPA design, selection of areas and of actions deemed relevant to reduce poverty status of individuals and communities. The government facilitates and hope the market will function. In focusing on generation of income and multiplying effects he goes on saying that a clear strategy for poverty reduction is not traceable in the draft but mere tactics in dealing with the problems identified.
As we have said above implementing PARPA as it is drafted and simply allocating actions per administrative division may bring to the poor lot (as they are numerous and ubiquitous) actions that may alleviate their suffering, mitigate their deprivation but not necessarily save them from social exclusion.
In this sense, PARPA does not seem to contain much potential for real step forward in development and may be much a result of conditionality for debt relief. This conditionality may prove too heavy as its implementation is budgeted at USD 1.8 billion for the 5-year period.
However, PARPA was subject to consultations in a novel way of involving the citizens in their organization in the planning for important goals in the society. That openness was praised by the private sector and civil society and its institutionalisation in decision-making process is warranted. PARPA is conceived and was announced to be a rolling plan paying much attention to monitoring and evaluation and information dissemination strategy.
Most officers from different government sectors acknowledge that with the benefit of the hindsight were PARPA to be drafted today they would have contributed in a different way and the result would be altogether different.
The involvement of high rank government officers (Minister of State Administration) in the delivery of a paper at the UN Conference whereby concern over good governance and public sector reform with a commitment to get planning down to the district and developing a framework for institutionalisation of the consultations down to local level reflect a degree of openness that one might want to take as a window of opportunity for making use of monitoring and evaluation and the consultation device to revise PARPA.
Private sector and civil society have clearly put forward during the consultations their willingness to take an active role and made several proposals. 'Grupo MoР·ambicano da DРЅvida' a loose network of civil society groups centred on external debt relief/cancellation has been very active and even called a meeting that produced a long list of proposals most of them not contemplated in PARPA. It is geared towards the generation of income and multiplying effects that NegrРіo emphasises in his paper.
McCarthy in its evaluation of Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique experience of debt relief suggests that IFIs and donor community should support working groups bringing together civil society and business community in every sector at central and province level along 'Grupo MoР·ambicano da DРЅvida' lines (McCarthy Eugene, 2001).
Again, NegrРіo drawing on the research and experience of fieldwork that Cruzeiro do Sul developed in the province of Nampula now being expanded to other provinces in central and northern Mozambique proposes an approach that brings back the focus of poverty reduction efforts to agriculture and agro-industry that help push out of the vicious cycle of poverty.
Partnership between family and national entrepreneur is advocated, cheap money availability to national entrepreneur, and reconstitution of institutional fabric for institutionalisation of negotiation between stakeholders, gender balance and incorporation of endogenous institutions in governance dynamics.
Human capital development with emphasis on education, drinkable water and sanitation not necessarily through formal means and reduced relative distances to services, markets and resources are taken as basic conditions.
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