V. OUTTURN OF THE 2001 BUDGET

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Mr Speaker,

• Budgetary allocation to the sectors for several years now, has been skewed towards the social sector and the 2001 budget is no exception. This is because our focus remains on poverty reduction. In 2001, we committed D173.2m to educational expansion and development, D110.4m to health and social welfare services delivery and D6.8m to youth and sport development. In effect the social sector is allotted 36.5% of to total government spending excluding debt service charges, which in itself constitutes 34.4% of total allocated expenditure for the year. In addition, we have earmarked D68.1m of HIPC relief funds for these sectors.

• With these, and the intervention of our development partners we have been able to increase the number of Upper Basic Schools (UBS) by nineteen representing an increment of 22% from the previous year. This has increased the number of places in UBS thereby increasing the transition rate to 91% in regions 1 & 2 and 100% in the other regions where basic cycles were introduced. The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) improved by 1.6% though it fell short of the target by 25%. Girls’ enrolment increased by 3.8% but again fell below the target by 3.4%. The Pupil Teacher Ratio at 36, is still within the target of 45 implying there is still room for better cost management, while Pupil Classroom Ratio slightly over stretch the target at 57 resulting from rising GER and the construction of new classrooms.

• Access to health facilities is slowly improving with approximately 90 per cent of the population living within 7.5 km of a health facility; success has also been recorded with the Baby Friendly Community Initiative (BFCI) in achieving its prime objective of increasing the numbers of mothers who exclusively fed their babies in the targeted villages

• Government has not lost sight of the fact that a prospering social sector has to be supported by a vibrant productive sector for sustainability. To this end we allocated 6.2% of total ‘disposable’ income to the productive sector and as a result, the contribution of agriculture to GDP increased by 8.6%, manufacturing by 1.7% and trade by 0.5%.

• In 2001, an amount of D65.7 million was allocated as HIPC funds with 65% going to the social sector. The purpose of the HIPC allocation is to accelerate social sector spending in our fight against poverty. This underscores our commitment to ensure that public resources are used effectively on poverty reducing expenditures to the benefit of the poor. Already there is a framework in place to monitor and track these resources as part of the agreement with the Bretton Woods Institutions in our PRGF program.

-end.