The Sunday Mail
Ambassador Philippe Van Damme
Ambassador Philippe Van Damme
In the past year, relations between Zimbabwe and the European Union have been extremely positive, particularly since the lifting of what we call “appropriate measures” under Article 9 of the Cotonou Agreement, which allows us to re-engage with the Government in development co-operation.
That means, in particular, we have been engaging in policy dialogue with different line ministries, including Finance Minister (Patrick Chinamasa) – the national authorising officer under European Development Co-operation.
He co-ordinates activity programming in areas of development cooperation on behalf of the Zimbabwe Government.
I’m insisting on that because it’s so important to rebuild the trust that we may have lost over the last 15 years.
It is equally important to have this regular dialogue, focusing not only on projects, but also on Government’s reform agenda and seeing how we can assist in that regard whether economically, politically, constitutionally or on governance.
My general assessment is that we have developed good working relations with Government at different levels.
European Development Fund
This is a multi-annual fund covering 2014-2020.
The Finance Ministry and the EU Commission signed the programme in February 2015, and we have started committing those funds to different programmes.
The total amount for the EDF’s National Indicative Programme is 234 million euros, and programme documents for 70 percent of this sum have already been signed.
We have also contracted roughly 40 percent of the NIP and are already disbursing 20 percent.
The main focus of our programming is governance, agriculture and health.
Last week, we signed important programmes with the United Nations Children’s Fund and the Health Ministry to support the Health Development Fund with about 43 million euros.
In 2015, over 25 million euros was disbursed through the Health Transition Fund.
In agriculture, we have three big pillars; the first being Productive Agriculture under which we are focusing on livestock.
We have signed a 40 million euro programme that will be launched over the coming weeks.
The second is resilience.
Zimbabwe is concerned with climate change challenges, hence, the Resilience Fund which we signed with the United Nations Development Programme.
Seventeen million euros is earmarked for this Fund, allowing non-state actors to organise community support programmes to help mainly ruralfolk mitigate and adapt to climate change.
The third pillar, Natural Resource Management, assists fragile environments (especially Area Four and Five environments where communities and wildlife interact).
Regarding governance, we – together with Parliament – have embarked on a support programme.
We also have constructive engagements with the Justice Ministry to support the Judicial Service Commission and to help Government with Constitutional alignment tasks.
Further, there is electoral support, an area that needs to be developed further with the UN, based on a common understanding between the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and stakeholders; in other words political parties, Government.
The electoral process has to align with the Constitution and has to be inclusive, with all political parties feeling comfortable with the way Zec leads that process.
In addition, we will prepare a more substantive programme to support the justice sector.
Supporting civil society in policy dialogue is also under our purview.
We plan to do all this within the NIP.
Additional funds are available outside of this, for instance, a 7,5 million euro programme has been designed to support trade and regional integration.
Here, focus is on trade facilitation, ease of doing business and enhancing the overall competitiveness of the Zimbabwean economy.
In principle, support is not channelled through Government, but through international development organisations and civil society.
Only a little funding has been earmarked to help the Finance Ministry organise and co-ordinate partners.
There is a very important economic governance support programme that we are working on with the World Bank; this is public finance management.
Budget support in the EU is extremely regulated, and has to comply with specific technical indicators.
Zimbabwe doesn’t fulfil these criteria at present, explaining why funding is not channelled through Government. By strengthening public finance management and helping Government sort out the mess in parastatals, we hope – along with the IMF and World Bank – to bring Government up to standard.
Direct support
Objective assessments are being made according to specific procedures under the Public Expenditure Financial Assessment Programme designed by the WB, IMF and EU years ago.
This assessment will likely be done in late 2016 or early 2017.
It’s a process.
For instance, when you speak about investment climate, these are not static issues. It is, however, important that this process goes in the right direction.
That is why a lot of our programmes work around these broad environments.
When I speak of governance or agriculture, all these programmes converge around creating a more conducive environment.
One of Zimbabwe’s critical challenges is its debt.
We know Government has been engaged in the Lima process to clear its arrears with multilateral finance agencies, and we welcome that initiative.
But this debt clearance is not the ultimate objective.
The ultimate objective is that you can access new multilateral funding through this process and renegotiate bilateral debts in the long term so that bilateral donors come back, and that Zimbabwe can return to international financial markets.
To achieve that, it’s necessary for Zimbabwe to show that it has a sustainable debt management policy and a stable macro-economic policy.
That is why this Lima process is critically important.
It is critically important to know that the Lima reform agenda is not only (about) economic reforms, but also about implementing the new Constitution and the rule of law.
I’m very grateful that Government has acknowledged that, and that this is part of a comprehensive reform agenda.
The EU, of course, supports this.
Trade
China is Zimbabwe’s expanding trade partner, and we support this as Zimbabwe and (the rest of Africa) need to integrate into the world economy.
We welcome Zimbabwe developing trade relations with China.
I don’t believe, though, that this is to the detriment of Zimbabwe-EU trade relations.
Economics and trade are not a zero-sum game. It’s a win-win game.
If you develop relations with the world, this creates prosperity and wealth for all.
If you look at statistics, trade with the EU has been growing over the last couple of years except 2015 when there was a small drop in trade volumes primarily due to the significant drop in diamond exports and partly due to decreased sugar and tobacco exports to Europe.
There has been an increase in horticultural and leather product exports.
The leather product export boom is a result of programmes conceived through Comesa and the Industrial Development Corporation (Zimbabwe). Total trade volume is 700 million euros, with a trade surplus of between 100 and 200 million euros favouring Zimbabwe.
◆ Ambassador Philippe Van Damme is the Head of the EU Delegation in Zimbabwe. He shared these views with The Sunday Mail Senior Reporter Lincoln Towindo in Harare on February 10, 2016.
