Nicaragua meets its donors

Donors and international community were impressed by coherent signals from Nicaraguan civil society when the Nicaraguan government and representatives of civil society met with international financial institutions and donor nations, writes Erika Brenner from Nicaragua. The government has to put into action revisions agreed upon in the National Development Plan.

Prior to the Consultative Group meeting, civil society invited donors and financial institutions for mutual exchange of perspectives on the future of Nicaragua.

The Nicaraguan government and representatives of civil society have met with the Consultative Group for Nicaragua, composed of international financial institutions and individual donor nations:

The Consultative Group meeting is a space of dialogue on a high level to evaluate the advancement of the country’s development and to coordinate the strategies of social and economic development.

This was the fifth Consultative Group meeting of Nicaragua and the first time it was held in the protagonist country and not in the exterior.

The main topic of the meeting in Managua this year was the presentation of the Bolaños government’s proposal for a National Development plan and poverty reduction strategy. All participants – including the government, the donors and civil society – agreed upon the usefulness of the first ever Nicaraguan development plan, but did demand revisions. There was agreement on at least the following:

Nicaragua needs profound institutional reforms and international aid has to be coordinated in a better way.

The final declaration of the Consultative Group laid out the following challenges for Nicaragua:

• Maintain macroeconomic stability and reduce poverty;  
• Implement the National Development Plan, improving it to include more consultation with civil society, decentralization, attention to gender issues, and support for small and medium scale businesses;
• Make institutional reforms in the judicial and electoral branches of government
• Deepen coordination with the international donor community.

Never before have the Nicaraguan government, international donors and civil society agreed so much on the path that Nicaragua has to take in order to improve the economic and social situation of the country.

Civil Society gets its voice heard

Several of the above named challenges are issues which civil society has been fighting for years and which now finally are being included also in the vocabulary of the government.

The international community also congratulated civil society itself for having presented very coherent and convincing proposals.

The Coordinadora Civil, one of the major voices of civil society, had coordinated joint initiatives on behalf of civil society both before and during the meeting. The initiative - or alliance – called GISN (South-North Advocacy Group ) also includes international NGOs, among them MS.

The initiatives related to the Consultative Group included a national media campaign, meetings with financial institutions and donors - among them the DANIDA - prior to the meeting of the Consultative Group.

There was also a civil march through Managua’s streets to draw people’s attention to the meeting, to the basic lack of information being provided by the Government and to the fact that the voice of the civil society has not been listened to.

President Bolaños' National Development Plan has been written with only brief consultation with civil society, reason why one of the main messages of civil society both before and during the meeting was the inclusion of the territories and local governments in both the planning and execution of local developments initiatives.

During the meeting, several local governments presented their own plans – and they were listened to.

- It is a unique opportunity for us to meet the donors face to face, says Guy Crosby Fox, representative of the local government of the Southern Autonomous Republic of the Atlantic Coast (RAAS). And referring to the neglect the Atlantic Coast in general is subject to, both from part of the government and the cooperation, he continued proclaiming that international aid also has to change direction and take into consideration the specific demands of the Atlantic Coast.

Civil society as a total, represented by the Coordinadora Civil, presented its own joint proposal which included: institutional reforms, efficient citizenship participation and a National Development Plan which is based on the people who represent the local needs and who elaborate the local plans.

Åsa Thomasson, representative of civil society in the Swedish Delegation, commented the presentations of Nicaraguan civil society as follows:

- International cooperation and the donors have been impressed by the work of civil society as visualized during the meeting. They have presented very similar messages and that strengthens the impact, she said.

Nicaragua part of the HIPC Initiative

Another result of the meeting was the fact, that Nicaragua will now be part of the so-called HIPC countries, which implies debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative. The final decision will be taken in December, but at the Consultative Group meeting, officials of the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE) announced that they will provide to Nicaragua US$781.3 million over the next two years. Of that, US$435.3 will go to debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. The rest will be in the form of loans, of which US$229.3 will go to the private sector to generate jobs and foreign exchange. Bank officials said that they will continue their focus on small and medium scale businesses.