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The role of parliament in the implementation of the PRSP
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9. Parliament and Law Reform to Facilitate PRSP Implementation
Ultimately also monitoring requires a close look at legal regimes which constrain economic reform or private sector development, all important requirements for efficiency and growth of the economy. In the case of Malawi, work is underway to revamp the Finance and Audit Act. In this respect the Budget and Finance Committee took its own initiative to hire a consultant to advice it on this important legislation as soon as the first draft of the bill was released. Ultimately, there will also be need for legislation to facilitate access to public information. Without this, access to information becomes chancy, as public officials tend to treat everything as secret. Public servants will wish to clear information with their superiors before releasing it to "outsiders". There is thus no way expenditure can be tracked without an open information regime. The experience in Malawi is that even though quarterly revenue and expenditure returns are required to be posted on the web, those are supplied at irregular periods. Often, only revenue figures are released without the corresponding expenditure returns that appear much later. When provided the figures also lack desegregation, resulting in mystification even for the consulting economists.
It is to be hoped that such initiatives as the new multi-door Trust Fund for Capacity Building for Poverty Reduction Strategies for Low Income Countries can enable Parliaments to attain some such goals. Regrettably, at this stage of the development of our parliamentary committees there may be no capacity to even fill in forms or enable them access such resources, and this is a gruesome reality in the Malawi Parliament.
With the launching of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), the Canadian parliamentary Centre and others are also interested to establish partnerships to strengthen African Parliaments. NEPAD despite the many criticisms caused by lack of participation by stakeholders at the design stage has received broad support from within the continent and the G8. It seeks to reverse economic and political marginalization of Africa which manifests itself in the poverty of the continent's masses. It is a window of opportunity for parliaments to develop "credible, rigorous and minimally bureaucratic methods of evaluating and acting on results". The Canadian Parliamentary Centre has, in cooperation with the World Bank Institute, developed cost effective models e.g. video conferencing on PRSP processes which took place among Parliamentarians from Niger, Nigeria, Malawi, Ghana and Ethiopia. This is important because we need to learn from one another but also to work in the most cost-effective manner.
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