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The Impact of the Aid Management Platform (AMP)
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Town of Kinshasa
Ministry of Planning
The improvement of the fundamental parameters of the Congolese economy
was achieved thanks to economic reforms carried out by the government since 2001.
We had emerged from a long period of armed conflict
and weakening of the capacity of national institutions.
This enabled the DRC to be eligible for the Heavily-Indebted Poor Countries initiative.
Since the resumption of this structural cooperation,
I can say that public aid for development, which plays an essential role
in financing DRC’s development program, has risen to nearly $2 billion,
representing the majority of the state’s budget.
Under the framework of its commitment to pursue the principles
of the Paris Declaration, and facing the demands of managing public finances,
having access to the results,
the Congolese government had decided to develop its first database.
With the support of many donors, particularly the UNDP,
Belgium, the World Bank, the European Union
as well as our technical partner Development Gateway,
the government put in place a new system called the Aid Management Platform.
Expert Room
Data Access Room
Here we’re in the server room.
I can show you our different machines.
You can see our principal server, which is here. That one is the backup server.
Just in case one breaks, it will switch to the backup.
This one here contains all information concerning aid -
this is the Aid Management Platform.
So, we put the database on the internet. Everyone can access it by internet.
Here we have the first router that you saw there.
And since many ministers are in the network, amongst them,
we wanted them to have access from their ministries to our database.
And it's here that we have the second router, which is there.
So institutions and people who log on the internet can have access to our database,
which is here in this room.
I came to AMP to have access to data.
Presently I’m a UNDP consultant, and I’m working on a study on aid effectiveness.
The study was requested by the community of donors
concerned with making development aid more effective so that it can better help
the Congolese population.
Such a study cannot be well-prepared without data;
the most probable and natural location to find this data is AMP.
That’s why I’m here at AMP, to see the data.
And what do I find here at AMP?
It’s a platform that gathers all the data on development aid to the DRC
as well as investments.
But, as expected, data are not always updated - there are many small problems.
Nonetheless, from the point of view of the philosophy,
from the point of view of the objectives pursued by AMP,
I’ve found that it’s already been very useful.
Because in the past, conducting such a study was difficult
you had to go around to each donor, and even then, donors are not always…
I can’t say that they’re not involved, but they’re not always prepared to divulge
the information they possess.
But thanks to AMP, you could say we’re making progress towards the formalization,
towards the transparency of data
which can be made available to decision-makers.
We’re from the office of macroeconomic studies.
In the framework of a government request from the World Bank,
we’ve undertaken a collaboration with the World Bank.
We’ve reconstructed macroeconomic reports for the year 2006, 2007, and 2008,
for the 11 provinces of the Republic.
In this context, we have had to use data from AMP,
particularly for reconstructing account reports
for financial operations for each province.
Aid received by province, donations received by province, etcetera.
This is the first way in which we’ve used data from AMP.
The other way is in the reconstruction of public investments on a provincial level.
This is an important aspect, because it allowed us to determine
all the levels of demand for provincial economies.
We’re from the Office of Regional Planning, and we’ve recently been in charge
of a 5-year plan for development in the provinces.
The information that AMP offers us regarding public investments
– allocation by sector and by zone, of all donor financing –
effectively allows us to have an idea of current transfers,
which are important, by province,
and which are distributed across different sectors.
This information is very important and very strategic,
and it is being used in creating the 5-year plan for provincial development.
Here we’re at the Office of Programming and Budgeting in the Ministry of Planning.
This office is in charge of the development of the capital budget
As you know, the budget consists of two different divisions:
the division of revenue and the division of expenditures.
The division of revenue must account for foreign aid
and incorporate it in the overall budget.
We resort to AMP, which provides us reliable data.
Using this data, we draw up the budget
and submit the information to the Minister of the Budget.