Change in NZ aid delivery to Cooks will reduce red tape

Transcript

The Cook Islands minister of finance, Mark Brown, says New Zealand's move towards paying the bulk of its aid directly into the country's national budget is a growing trend that will prevent duplication.

The announcement was made last week by the New Zealand foreign minister, Murray McCully, at a joint ministerial meeting on Aitutaki.

Up to now most of the money has been managed by New Zealand foreign affairs officials.

Mark Brown told Bridget Tunnicliffe delivering aid in this way is more efficient.

MARK BROWN: The process is aimed at reducing the transaction costs so you don't have separate monitoring and evaluation systems for the programmes that are being funded through these monies, you can use the national systems as much as possible. It's nothing new for the Cook Islands. The New Zealand development assistance in various sectors such as education and tourism over the last few years have been on the performance based budget process. Now we're incorporating the bulk of New Zealand's development assistance to the Cook Islands through this same performance based budget process which really means there is a number of milestones and performance indicators that must be achieved as we do within our own budget system.

BRIDGET TUNNICLIFFE: Do you get more freedom about what you choose this money to be spent on?

MB: Well there is an agreement first before these funds are utilised and this is developed over the three year period of New Zealand's development programme for the Cook Islands so we've just signed off for the 2015 to 2018 development programme under the joint commitment for development. And in there the Cook Islands identifies the priority areas that we will be targeting and New Zealand also commits towards those particular areas and in it there is certain reporting requirements that must be adhered to. So for the Cooks over the next three year period New Zealand has prioritised strengthening the Cook Islands tourism sector in terms of marketing and destination development, strengthening certain infrastructure areas that are critical for economic growth, education infrastructure, also improved ICT connectivity and our renewable energy sector. These are also very clearly outlined in our budget process so this allows New Zealand then to concentrate more on a higher level of aid delivery rather than to be tied up in terms of the details and implementation of a lot of these areas of priority that we've identified.

BT: So it sounds like there'll be less bureaucracy and paperwork as a result so does that mean that more of the money will actually be spent on the tangible stuff?

MB: Yes, that's right, this is one of the outcomes of the reduction in transaction costs, a lot of the bureaucratic work in terms of reporting requirements and so forth is done using national systems so the Cook Islands national system rather than having to duplicate it with a separate monitoring system that would normally be run through the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs.