MOGADISHU — Two top UN officials in Somalia said Tuesday that they met with the country’s finance minister, Abdirahman Beileh, to discuss the urgent need to complete the election process as quickly as possible in order to avoid missing out on donor assistance.
The meeting, according to James Swan, the UN Secretary-Special General’s Representative for Somalia, and Adam Abdelmoula, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, resolved to complete the electoral process as soon as possible in the coming weeks to allow Somalia to meet critical International Monetary Fund (IMF) deadlines.
“All agreed that the electoral process must be completed urgently in the next weeks, or Somalia will miss important IMF dates, threatening foreign support and the health of the Somali national budget,” the UN tweeted.
The IMF said in March that its Somalia program is due for a review on May 17, but election delays imply that a new government may not be ready to timely approve planned reforms. It said the review needs to be finalized to prevent the program from automatically lapsing since development partner support is essential to the successful implementation of the authorities’ economic and structural reform strategy.
It cautioned that if the IMF support programs’ evaluation was not finished by that date, the programs would be automatically terminated. “Once a president is elected, IMF staff would confirm the authorities’ commitment to the economic program and development partners’ preparations to resume budget grants to keep the program on track,” the IMF said in a statement on March 9.
In Mogadishu, Somalia’s election body is registering freshly elected Members of Parliament and Senators ahead of their inauguration on April 14. This will clear the way for lawmakers to select a president, a long-delayed procedure.