Friday 18 May 2012

IRIN Reporters.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has withdrawn its advisory team from Swaziland, saying it is unable to support the government’s proposed financial reform programme.

The IMF was assisting the government in implementing the Fiscal Adjustment Roadmap (FAR), to right-size the budget, where government spending currently exceeds its revenue.

“Government has yet to propose a credible reform programme that could be supported by a new IMF staff monitored programme… the budget allocates an increasing share of resources to some sectors at the expense of education and health,” Joannes Mongardini, head of the IMF team in Swaziland, told a recent press conference.

Swaziland’s severe financial woes began after the global slowdown in 2008, when revenue from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) plummeted. The union - comprising Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland - applies a common set of tariffs and disproportionately distributes the revenue to member states.

The spending habits of King Mswati III - sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch - and the royal household are routinely splashed across newspapers, from the overseas shopping trips of his 13 wives to a “birthday present” for the king this year of a multimillion-dollar private jet. The South African daily newspaper, The Star, reported on 17 May that one of Mswati’s wives had run up a bill of US$65,000 at a luxury Johannesburg hotel during her month-long stay.

About two-thirds of Swaziland’s 1.1 million population live in chronic poverty in a food insecure country that also has the world's highest HIV/AIDS prevalence, with one in four people aged 15-49 infected.

HARARE, ZIMBABWE, 2 April 2012. The launch of the Policy framework document: Accelerated Arrears Clearance, Debt and Development Strategy (ZAADDS), by the Inclusive government of Zimbabwe on the 16th of March 2012, was a landmark event in the history of the inclusive government. ZAADDS is one among numerous important policy documents this government came up with since birth in 2008.AFRODAD is proud to have participated in the development of this key framework that is premised to resolve Zimbabwe’s debt overhang.

Joint media statement

Reacting to the announcement that Robert Zoellick is stepping down as World Bank President, a global coalition of campaigners has called for an open and merit-based process to elect the next World Bank leader, and for developing countries to determine the selection.