The Minister of Economy and Finance Romuald Wadagni, and the new Ambassador, Head of Delegation of the European Union to Benin, Sylvia Hartleif, officially opened the last dialogue for the year 2020 between the European Union and the Government of Benin on budget support. This was during an inaugural ceremony that took place in the conference room of the Ministry of Economy and Finance in Cotonou on the afternoon of Wednesday, December 2, 2020.
It is a meeting that allows “to review the progress made in the various sectoral reforms”, according to the Ambassador of the European Union, Sylvia Hartleif, who congratulated the government of Benin for not only its effective efforts in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also the measures taken to maximize and secure the amounts of budget support.
For the Minister of Economy and Finance, it is a question of going further. . And for that, he wanted listening and transparency to be the keys to the dialogues that are opening up. “My two messages are to listen and to continue to do all that is our responsibility in terms of transparency and management (…) We have a duty of transparency,” said Romuald Wadagni, Minister of Economy and Finance.
The National Coordinator of the Technical Support Unit for the National Authorizing Officer of the European Development Fund, UT-FED, Septime Azonnoudo recalled that “It is in the dynamics of information exchange and mutual understanding that it was decided to organize a series of technical meetings on the implementation of the three budget support programmes”. These technical discussions relate to the Contract for Good Governance and Development (CBGD), the Support Program for Territorial Development (PADT) and the Support Program for Sustainable Development in the Agricultural Sector (PADDSA).
This traditional two-day meeting of exchanges between Benin and the European Union took place in a particular context marked by two major events noted by the National Coordinator of UT-FED: “There is the assumption of office of Her Excellency Mrs. Sylvia Hartleif, the new Ambassador, Head of Delegation of the European Union in Benin and the management of the Covid-19 health crisis with its triple health, economic and social effects”. The presence of the Ambassador is above all, according to him, the testimony of the place of choice that the two parties jointly grant to “dialogue as an instrument of cooperation par excellence which makes it possible to exchange information, to encourage mutual cooperation and to facilitate the definition of priorities as made clear in the Cotonou Agreement,” he said.
It should be recalled that the three conventions, the subject of the dialogue, are worth 254,000,000 million euros, or approximately 166,613,078,000 FCFA, the first two of which were signed during the visit of the Head of State, His Excellency Patrice Talon, in Brussels in 2016.
