“South Sudan has asked donor countries to speed up delivery of aid designed to help rebuild its devastated infrastructure and create a peace dividend after two decades of civil war. Following a January 2005 peace deal, $4.5 billion was pledged to Sudan by donors, who were meeting in the south on Thursday. After the deal they also put $400 million in a Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) to monitor its expenditure. …. ‘We think that donor pledges are on track, but that delivery is slow, not just of the MDTF but everything,’ said Ishac Diwan, the World Bank representative for Sudan and Ethiopia. The Bank is one of the main partners directing the MTDF. Diwan said that processing cash through MDTF structures was bureaucratic but less open to corruption. … Southern finance ministry official Aggrey Tisa Sabuni told Reuters that Sudanese people hoped for faster aid delivery from donors, ‘...but given the capacity to deliver in Sudan, they are going in the right direction.’ With no formal banking structures and too few skilled workers in the southern government's ministries, the capacity of authorities to receive and spend the money has been limited. …” [Reuters/Factiva]



The Sudan Tribune further reports that “Participants in Sudan Consortium Meeting broadly called for accelerated action in carrying out certain key aspects of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with a focus on increased budget transparency and good governance, along with a sustainable end to the violence in Darfur. … With respect to Southern Sudan and the government of South Sudan (GoSS), the Consortium welcomed the establishment of institutions at all levels, along with evidence of more active accountability and expanded capacity building efforts. However, participants noted that the GoSS faces enormous challenges, and that financial management and accountability systems remain rudimentary as admitted by the president of GoSS, General Salva Kiir Mayardit. ‘We are indeed responsible for some of the problems given our lack of capacity and we regret that we have not been able to move faster on the capacity side.’ he said. He also urged donors to honor their pledges. … Among the achievements over the past year, was the work of a National Constitutional Review Commission in Khartoum, along with the establishment of a Civil Service Commission. In the South, ministries have been established and staffed, and certain basic services, including access to safe water, are improving. ‘We are pleased to see that the basic structures for sharing power and sharing revenues have been put in place, and that they are working,’ said Diwan. ‘But it is critical that we see measurable progress on some of the difficult remaining areas, without which the potential benefits of the CPA could be undermined.’ …” In a separate piece, The Sudan Tribune notes that “… In his speech at the Sudan Consortium Meeting in Juba [Fri]day, Kiir, strongly reaffirmed his commitment to fight corruption in the southern administration. He disclosed that his government is drafting a legal arsenal to this end, including the Public Financial Management Act. The First Vice-President urged all the Sudanese including civil society and the media to campaign against corruption ‘at all levels of our society’. He underscored that corruption is not limited to the south. … He also invited the donors to support the anti-corruption fight and to consolidate these efforts. …”