POVERTY MONITORING SYSTEM IN MALAWI

CONSULTANTS

Prof. Ben Kiregyera (Team Leader)

Dr. Chris Scott

Dr. O.O. Ajayi

Dr. Buleti Nsemukila

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Table of Contents i

Acronyms ii

Summary iv

Acknowledgements vii

Section 1. Introduction

1.1 Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy 1

1.2 The Mission 2

Section 2. Activities Undertaken and Findings,

2.1 Meetings with Officials 4

2.2 Document Review 9

2.3 Review of the Current Poverty Monitoring System 9

2.4 Review of the Strategic Plan for the NSO 18

2.5 Key Issues 22

2.6 Proposals for a Stakeholders’ Workshop 22

Section 3. Main Conclusions and Recommendations

3.1 Main Conclusions 26

3.2 Recommendations 27

Annexes

Annex I: List of Officials Met 29

Annex II: List of Documents Accessed 32

Annex III: Draft Workshop Programme 33

Annex IV: General guidelines for Paper Preparation and Presentation 37

Annex V: Preparatory Activities for the Workshop 38

Annex VI: Anticipated Activities After the Workshop 39

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ACRONYMS

CERT Centre for Educational Research and Training

CSR Centre for Social Research, University of Malawi

CWIQ Core Welfare Indicators Survey

DHS Demographic and Health Survey

EMIS Education Management Information System

EU European Union

FIMTAB Financial Management Transparency and Accountability

HMIS Health Management Information System

HSA Health Surveillance Assistant

IFMIS Integrated Financial Management Information System

IFPRI International Food Policy Research Institute

IMR Infant Mortality Rate

IHS Integrated Household Survey

IMF International Monetary Fund

LGDMP Local Government and Development Management Programme

MANEB Malawi National Examination Board

MEJN Malawi Economic Justice network

MIS Management Information System

MCDE Malawi College of Distance Education

M and E Monitoring and Evaluation

MPRS Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy

MPRSP Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper

MRALG Ministry of Regional Administration and Local Government – President’s office (Tanzania)

MSCE Malawi School Certificate of Education

MTEF Medium Term Expenditure Framework

NEC National Economic Council

NGO Non-Governmental Organization

NSO National Statistical Office

NSS National Statistical System

PMMP Poverty Monitoring Master Plan

QUIM Qualitative Impact Monitoring

SIMSIP Simulation of Social Indicators and Poverty

SMART Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound

SWOT Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats

TOR Terms of reference

UNDP United Nations Development Programme

UNICEF United Nations Children Fund

USAID United States Agency for International Development

ZPRP Zanzibar Poverty Reduction Plan

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SUMMARY

Malawi has adopted and launched a comprehensive poverty reduction strategy, known as the MPRS, which will provide the medium-term development framework (2002-2005) for the country. The development of the strategy involved extensive consultations with a broad range of stakeholders including Government, civil society, public and private sector, academia and development partners. This was crucial for transparency and ownership of the strategy.

The Strategy took into account the situational analysis and poverty profile, past developmental efforts and performance, and lessons learnt. The MPRS is built around 4 pillars, namely sustainable pro-poor growth, human capital development, improving the quality of life of the most vulnerable and good governance as well as cross-cutting issues of HIV/AIDS, gender and empowerment, environment and science and technology. It provides a macro-economic and expenditure framework within which the strategy will operate. The framework balances the expenditure requirements based on costing of poverty reducing activities with the resource envelope.

Arrangements for the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the strategy are given including the budget, indicators and targets and the review process. These arrangements provide for the involvement of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and communities in the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the strategy.

Effective poverty monitoring requires baseline values for indicators for which targets have been set. One fifth of the targeted indicators in the MPRS have no baseline values, which makes it difficult to assess the feasibility of the associated targets. Where baseline values are given, indicator-specific baseline dates are not shown. The quality of the data used for setting some targets appears poor, while there is a danger that policy-makers may draw incorrect conclusions from movements in certain indicators. While a lack of data may explain the omission of some indicators, it cannot explain the omission of others.

Some targets could be improved by re-specifying the indicators in such a way as to focus more sharply on, and therefore provide an incentive to increase, the amount of sectoral resources spent at the point of delivery. Other targets add little value either because they come close to duplicating each other, or because they are not central to MPRS priorities. For some indicators, there is inconsistency in the definition of baseline and target values. Details of the costing exercise undertaken to ensure consistency of the MPRS targets with the MTEF resource envelope are not included either in the text or in the annexes of the MPRS.

The MPRS contains fewer indicators than some other PRSPs, but some spatially disaggregated measures should be included to track geographic variations in poverty incidence within the country. Some indicators for the cross-cutting issues should also be added. Targets need not necessarily be set for either spatially disaggregated or cross-cutting indicators. An annual calendar should be drawn up which indicates when data for which targets will become available and how this information will be used in policy making. Lack of trained personnel and institutional capacity is likely to prove a serious constraint on the collection and use of data at the district level.

Four types of monitoring process can be distinguished in the MPRS according to the type of information used: (i) public sector financial management; (ii) management information systems of line Ministries; (iii) surveys and Censuses, and (iv) qualitative data. The mission had neither the competence nor the time to examine public sector financial management systems in any depth. Ministry MISs display many problems. The quality of data is often poor and results from a lack of resources, limited human capacity, high staff turn-over, weak incentives and the absence of a discriminating demand for information by policy-makers. Where computerised MIS have been introduced, the problem is not only the risk of a mismatch between the demands of the hard/software and the managerial/ technical skills available, but the fundamental lack of experience in systematically using data to inform decision-making. Parallel data recording systems within the same Ministry exist but rarely interact. Even when reasonable quality data are available and are relevant to policy, little or no analysis of this information is carried out.

The NSO and other institutions have recently conducted a series of surveys and a census which are highly relevant to the data needs of the MPRS. The main priority in this area is to develop a credible and sustainable development plan, National Statistical Master Plan, for the National Statistical System covering the next 5-10 years. This plan would fix a timetable for future statistical activities in such a way as to meet the needs of data users without placing the NSO and other data producers under excessive pressure in any one year. The NSO will need to be strengthened in order for it to effectively coordinate and provide technical leadership to the NSS. The proposed Strategic Plan which aims to strengthen the NSO needs to be recast to reflect the new roles the NSO will be expected to play in the monitoring and evaluation of the MPRS. The NSO Strategic Plan will be an essential component of the National Statistical Master Plan.

Considerable experience has been accumulated in Malawi with respect to the use of participatory techniques to generate qualitative data for a variety of purposes. Such data are an important complement to the quantitative information collected through surveys and routine administrative records. Qualitative data are likely to be of particular significance for planning at local level. The priority in this area is to clarify how these qualitative data will be combined and integrated with quantitative data for policy making. One issue which policy makers should address is how to respond when participatory poverty assessments and survey-based consumption-poverty measures give contradictory signals as to the direction and/or magnitude of changes in poverty..

The institutional framework for poverty monitoring has not been clearly established. There are serious risks of duplication of function between the Ministry for Poverty Alleviation, the Ministry of Finance and NEC. It is also unlikely that the NSO can assume responsibility for supervising data collection at the district level without a substantial injection of funds. It would be desirable to design the monitoring system in such a way as to preserve and enhance the inclusive and participatory features of the process used in drafting the MPRS.

The idea of holding a stakeholders’ workshop to provide a forum for further discussion of the information requirements of the MPRS was supported all round. The workshop will review the current situation in Malawi and examine good practice regionally and internationally. Possible application and adaptation of international examples for use in Malawi, drawing on the experiences of practitioners in neighbouring countries will be discussed. The workshop will also enhance the consultative process which has been the hallmark of the MPRS.

Advance planning is essential for the success of the workshop. Accordingly, a workshop organising committee chaired by NEC has been proposed, workshop preparatory activities and key issues to be discussed have been identified and the workshop programme has been drawn.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Consultants would like to acknowledge the Government of Malawi for seeing the need to review the proposed Poverty Monitoring System and the Strategic Plan for the National Statistical Office, and PARIS21 for funding the mission. The briefing received from Ms. Mary Strode of PARIS21 Secretariat is very much appreciated.

The Consultants were very well received even when their visits to some offices were at short notice. For this, they would like to thank the NSO for making the necessary appointments and various officials met for finding time to hold discussions with the mission members. Special thanks go to Mr. Elliot Phiri, Principal Statistician at NSO who accompanied the Consultants on all visits and to Mr. George Zimalirana, Head of the MPRS Secretariat and Mr. Charles Machinjili, Commissioner of Census and Statistics for ensuring that the mission was on course.

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1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy (MPRS)

The Malawi Vision 2020 has been formulated and adopted to provide a national long-term development perspective for the nation. It forms “…..a foundation on which the country can formulate, implement and evaluate short and medium-term plans for both the public and private sector. It provides detailed background information and justification for the population’s aspirations and strategies recommended to achieve these aspirations”[1].

On 24 April 2002, the President of Malawi officially launched the Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy (MPRS) as the overarching medium-term development strategy (2002-2005) that will form a basis for all future actions by all stakeholders aimed at poverty reduction in Malawi. Its overall goal is to achieve “sustainable poverty reduction through socio-economic and political empowerment of the poor”. Poverty is a serious development problem in Malawi; it is widespread, deep and severe. Analysis of data from the 1998 Integrated Household Survey (IHS) showed that about 65% of the population were poor and about 29% were living in absolute poverty[2].

The launch of the MPRS was a culmination of a wide participatory, consultative and iterative process which started some 15 months ago. The process involved consultations with a broad range of stakeholders including Government, civil society, public and private sector, academia and development partners. Detailed work on the strategy was done by 21 Thematic Working Groups (TWGs) also drawn from a wide variety of stakeholders. These groups drafted sectoral position papers which were prioritised and costed. A synthesis of these papers constitute the MPRS. The TWGs reported to a Technical Committee chaired by NEC and comprising technicians from various institutions. The Technical Committee in turn reported to a Steering Committee of Principal Secretaries, which was chaired by the Secretary to the Treasury. And the Steering Committee reported to an Inter-Ministerial Committee chaired by the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning.

The MPRS has four pillars which are the main components under which various policies and activities are grouped into a coherent framework. These pillars are:

· Sustainable Pro-Poor Economic Growth

· Human Capital Development

· Improving the Quality of Life for the Most Vulnerable, and

· Good Governance.

In addition to the four pillars, MPRS identifies four issues which cut across the pillars, namely: HIV/AIDS, Gender, Environment, and Science and Technology.

The MPRSP presents a detailed Action Plan with prioritised and costed activities and implementing agencies. It also provides for monitoring and evaluation of the strategy goals and targets. This is expected to be done using indicators provided in the Action Plan for each component of the MPRS. Indicators to be used to monitor and evaluate the MPRS include process indicators (input and output), outcome indicators and impact indicators. Monitoring and evaluation of the MPRS will be done at national, district and local levels. Monitoring information will be widely disseminated to all stakeholders in a transparent manner.

Provision has been made for the private sector and the civil society to play an active role in the execution of the MPRS.

1.2 The Mission

In December 2001, PARIS21[3] fielded a mission to Malawi to explore the need for a PARIS21 country workshop. Such a workshop is necessary to:

· draw together statisticians, policy makers and development partners in order to agree on information needs for informing development planning;

· develop partnerships at both the national level and the sub-regional level between policy makers, information users, information producers, supporting donor agencies and international organisations;

· improve the dialogue between information users, including policy makers and civil society, and the national producers of statistics. This dialogue is the beginning of the process necessary to agree the steps for developing a strategy (and for reviewing any existing strategy) to support the priority information needs of governments and other key stakeholders; and

· promote best practice and lesson learning within the sub-region by exploring the methodologies and processes used by countries to provide priority statistics and information to data users.

The Government of Malawi requested a follow-up mission which was undertaken during the period 15 - 28 April 2002. Members of the mission included:

1. Prof. Ben Kiregyera (Statistician and Mission Leader)

2. Dr. Chris Scott (Poverty Monitoring Expert)

3. Dr. Buleti Nsemukila (Poverty Analyst)