East Africa’s natural resources management skills up, says IMF

Money Markets

Visitors tour the Ngamia 1 oil well in Turkana County. Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have discovered commercial quantities of hydrocarbons PHOTO | FILE 

By GEOFFREY IRUNGU, girungu@ke.nationmedia.com

In Summary

• Eastern African countries are improving ability to manage natural resources, thanks to technical assistance from a group affiliated to the International Monetary Fund.
• IMF and other donors said they would increase their contributions in the upcoming programme though they did not disclose how much they paid in the past financial year.

Eastern African countries are improving ability to manage natural resources, thanks to technical assistance from a group affiliated to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the fund said.

The steering committee of the IMF Africa Regional Technical Assistance Centre East (East AFRITAC), which brings together donors and representatives of the countries, said the centre would continue to provide technical support to manage the economies.

Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have already discovered commercial quantities of hydrocarbons which are waiting for exploitation. AFRITAC assists countries in the region to achieve better systems for public financial management, revenue administration, financial sector regulation, transparency and accountability.

Technical assistance

The IMF released the statement following a meeting in Kampala, Uganda. The meeting was attended by member countries and representatives of donors including the African Development Bank, the UK, EU, Germany, the Netherlands, the East African Community and IMF staff.

East AFRITAC, located in Dar es Salaam, is one of nine regional IMF technical assistance centres around the world and serves Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

The IMF outfit also collaborates with the countries on fiscal analysis, financial sector regulation and supervision, monetary policy and operations, payments systems, and economic and financial statistics. The steering committee oversees activities and provides guidance on AFRITAC’s operations.

Natural-resource wealth

“They (steering committee) also supported the centre’s (AFRITAC) enhanced work on regional integration and in building capacity to manage member countries’ natural-resource wealth,” said the IMF in a statement.

The IMF said the meeting also involved sharing of experiences on economies of the region.

“Officials shared experiences on success stories ranging from developing more robust, accountable and transparent public financial management systems, revenue administration, strengthened financial sector regulation and supervision frameworks to safeguard financial stability,” said the IMF in the statement.

During the meeting, East AFRITAC assessed activities since May 2014 and discussed the operations programme for 2015 to 2020.

The steering committee noted substantial scaling up of capacity development activities in support of the East African Community’s economic integration.

IMF and other donors said they would increase their contributions in the upcoming programme though they did not disclose how much they paid in the past financial year.