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Date : 22/8/2007
At Nazaha Workshop: Prime Minister Fayyad Pledges to Enhance Transparency
PA Allocation and
Distribution Report
More transparency within the financial system and regular reports to the public – those were the promises made by Dr. Salam Fayyad, Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian Minister of Finance, who attended a workshop in Ramallah on August 22th 2007 on a report recently published by the Nazaha project, dealing with the allocation and distribution of funds by the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The Nazaha project is implemented by AMAN (Coalition for Accountability and Integrity) together with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) to combat corruption in the NGO sector and to strengthen the Palestinian civil society through enhancing accountability and good governance as part of the European Union’s “Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights”.
The PA Allocation and Distribution report aims at the following:
examining the incoming- and outgoing finances of the PA for the purpose of defining the size of theses funds in its relations to the data available
defining the size of funds held by the Israeli government which is collected on behalf of the Palestinians in the form of taxes and customs
defining the number and amount of grants and assistance given to the PA during that period; as well as the mechanisms used for distribution
defining obstacles and problems related to the allocation and distribution of theses funds
defining violations of the PA that relte to the allocation and distribution of these funds during the period mentioned
The report describes and identifies problems of the last reporting period from January 2006 until June 2007. During most of that period the finance ministry had been under the control of the Hamas-led government, a period which witnessed the suspension of diplomatic relations by the Western donor countries and Israel with the Palestinian government and the suspension of financial aid directly to the government. Hence no information regarding in-coming money was reported. A representative from the President’s office attributed this development to the Hamas government. He elaborated by saying that the financial influx to the Palestinian government mainly took place by means of high-ranking members of the Hamas-government personally carrying large sums of donations from other countries to the Palestinian Territories. The report notes that lack of information available by this and past governments made it impossible to ensure any kind of accountability.
Nevertheless, since the political and budgetary situation has changed since the government of Salam Fayyad has been appointed in June 2007, several options to ensure future transparency in the allocation and distribution process are presented in the report. Among others, it is suggested that the budget plan for 2008 should be presented to the PLC and that NGOs should be involved in defining the priorities within the budget. In addition, it is proposed to establish a financial system within the finance ministry that would prevent people in power from abusing their position for personal gains.
Accompanied by representatives of President Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Fayyad announced to undertake corrections on the whole financial system of the PA which would enable greater accountability. In order to increase the transparency of the government, the Prime Minister also agreed on many of the recommendations submitted by the Nazaha-project in its PA Allocation and Distribution Report. This includes Fayyad’s commitment to publish a monthly report on the ministry’s financial status, starting this September.
President Abbas’ representative, Dr. Rafiq Husseini, stressed the importance of such a report not only for the government but also for the public. He explained that the PA has opened a special channel for expenditures in order to facilitate supervision. Though looking back at last year, Dr. Husseini stated that “the internal problems with Hamas and the holding of Palestinian funds by the Israelis created many problems and made any kind of accountability impossible”.
The general coordinator of AMAN, Dr. Azmi Shuaibi, underlined the important role of NGOs in questioning the PA. He also criticized that there have been set backs in the process of reaching transparency during the last period and insisted that “The civil society has to be trained on how to make the public sector more accountable hence enforcing the fight against corruption”.
Copyright AMAN © 2007
