By Abdiaziz Hassan
Friday, November 27, 2009
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Somalia's Western-backed government plans a big increase in spending next year chiefly funded by foreign donors, with a large chunk going on battling piracy and hardline rebels, a minister told Reuters on Friday.
Somalia has lacked an effective central government for 18 years and the current administration controls little more than a few parts of the capital Mogadishu.
But International Cooperation Minister Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame said that an increase in donor funds would help the government to extend its influence across the country, which Western security experts say has become a safe haven for militants who use it to plot attacks in the region and beyond.
"I hope our partners will support the new budget because our main concern is security, especially tackling terrorism and piracy which are two huge problems," he said in an interview.
"I believe that if we obtain the necessary financial backing to pay our forces, we can defeat the pirates. It is a simple network of criminals, but we lack the capacity and finances to address this problem."
The government planned to spend $108 million in 2010, 74 percent of which it hopes will be provided by donors, Abdishakur said. This represented a big jump from the $39.6 million it expects to have spent in 2009, and about 40 percent of next year's funds would be allocated to the security services.
An important component of those forces is the fledgling coastguard, which aims to curb attacks by Somali pirates who attack shipping in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, and have made tens of millions of dollars in ransoms.
President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's administration is also battling rebels in the drought-hit Horn of Africa nation, including the Islamist al Shabaab group, which Washington says is al Qaeda's proxy in Somalia.
"We believe the lack of government presence in some parts of the nation has contributed to there being terrorist bases on land, and to piracy too. The two criminal organisations are not only a threat to Somalia, they are global threat," he said.
This week, the African Development Bank (AfDB) resumed its relationship with Somalia after a break of nearly two decades and signed over a $2 million grant.
Abdishakur said this was a positive and encouraging step.
"We will use the grant and AfDB expertise to restructure the central bank, and other financial institutions," he said. "There will be challenges reforming the financial and security sectors, but we have to face them at any cost. These reforms have to be radical and must target individuals involved in mismanagement."
Most of Somalia's donors were Western nations, but he added that he hoped more governments would lend their support.
"Our previous government left a mess which is taking too long to clean up to restore the trust of Arab countries. We are not getting financial support from these nations ... but we are still hopeful we will get their help at this critical time." (Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by David Stamp) ((Email: nairobi.newsroom@reuters.com; tel: +254 20 222 4717)) ((For Interactive factbox on Somalia please click here)).
Source: Reuters, Nov 27, 2009