Poverty Action Fund Monitoring

What is Poverty Action Fund?

This is a mechanism that the Government of Uganda established in the Financial Year of 1997/98 to mobilise additional resources for expenditure in to the social sector to alleviate poverty. The source of funding for the Poverty Action Fund (PAF) is savings from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries' (HIPC) Debt Relief Initiative, donor contributions and the Government of Uganda own resources.

PAF provides funding to PEAP priority areas that are directly poverty reducing through either:

• Increasing the ability of the poor to raise their incomes, or
• Improving the quality of life of the poor, and
• The impact of the programme on the poor must be direct.

To this effect, PAF provides funding to the following programme areas

• Primary Education
• Primary Health Care
• Water and Sanitation development
• Rural Feeder roads maintenance
• Agriculture extension
• Micro Finance/ Restocking programmes

Others include Control of HIV/AIDS, pilot schemes for adult literacy and enhancing efficiency in the Judiciary system (clearance of the case backlog).

 Numerous programme areas can be included in the financing grid of the PAF as long as the fit in the Eligibility Criteria for PAF programmes administered by Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development. 5% of the total PAF resources is shared by Government agencies that are involved in ensuring that public resources are not misappropriated. The 5% of these resources is set aside to ensure improved effectiveness, transparency and accountability of use of these resources. The benefiting Government agencies from the 5% are ;

• The Inspectorate of Government
• The Auditor General
• The Public Accounts Committee
• The Inspectorate Department under the Ministry of Local Government
• The Directorate of Accounts under Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development.

PAF resources have increasingly become a major component of the Uganda budget. The resources have more than doubled from 1997 to 2000 and thus rapidly constituting a big percentage of the national budget.

 Table showing PAF composition of the National Budget from the Financial Year 1997/98 to 2000/01

Financial year	Percentage of the Budget
1997/98	16.3%
1998/99	22.0%
1999/00	26.2%
2000/01	31.0%

Source: PAF resources and expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development

PAF resources are sent to the all the districts of Uganda as conditional grants and thus are utilised according to guidelines established by Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (MFPED) as well as line ministries.

In order to establish a dialogue mechanism between all the stakeholders of PAF, quarterly meetings are organised and chaired by MFPED and attended by line ministries, donors and the civil society. During the meetings, line ministries present their quarterly reports, donors present also their report about their investigations about the implementation of PAF and the civil society too make present their statement. UDN makes a presentation on behalf of the civil society involved in the monitoring the implementation of PAF during these quarterly meetings.

1.3 PMCs and PAF Monitoring:

 Following the 10th CSOs PAF Steering Committee meeting, it was recommended that UDN changes the approach in which it has been carrying out the monitoring of PAF.  This was attributed to the fact that the earlier approaches were producing the same results.  The Committee therefore, recommended that value be added to the previous monitoring outcomes.

One way to add value to the exercise was to put in place District PAF monitoring committees who would continue to have a sustained existence in the district and carry out monitoring just like UDN would have done it. In May 2001 UDN facilitated the formation of PAF Monitoring Committees in 12 districts with the 13th district forming its committee out of self-initiative.

 Since their formation the committees have been carrying out the monitoring of PAF with the assistance of UDN.

1.4  Objectives of the monitoring

This monitoring round, our emphasis was to establish: -

• Communities' perception of the PAF programmes and interventions
• Utilization of the PAF outputs by the beneficiaries.
• Problems faced by the sector implementers in delivering the intended outcomes.
• What views the different interest groups of the Women, Youth, and People with Disabilities, the Children and the Elderly have towards the PAF.
• How to share PAF information and accountability with the intended beneficiaries.
• Communities' participation in budgeting and planning.

1.5 Focus of Monitoring:

In February 2001, UDN organised a skills development workshop for PMCS and one of the strategies was to have a continuous PAF monitoring exercise and formation of sub-county PMCS or identification of key informants at S.C level. However, this would only be possible after all districts have written and submitted proposals.  This has been done by 6 district where monitoring for this quarter was done.

Besides gathering information about PAF in the district a district dialogue was organised to share findings and PMC experience in monitoring. The workshops were a forum for interaction and dialogue between district leaders, stakeholders and the wider civil society. This would be done on a continuous basis since it is a forum for discussion between implementers and civil society.