2007 Press Releases
PRT Program Helps Iraqis Fund Development Projects
(Budget aid is key say Salah ad Din PRT advisers)
December 5, 2007
By Jim Fisher-Thompson
State Department Correspondent
Baghdad – Leveraging Iraq’s ability to use its own resources to fund development projects is increasingly becoming the focus of U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) operating in all of the nation’s 18 provinces.
That was the point made by Steven Buckler PRT team leader in Salah ad Din Province and Dave Bailey U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Representative on the team speaking to journalists at the State Department via a digital video conference November 30.
According to Buckler, a senior Foreign Service Officer who volunteered to head up the Salah ad Din PRT, a top priority is “to work more closely with the Iraqis to get them to spend their own money.”
He said that means working with provincial and local governments -- the provincial council and the city councils and district councils throughout the province – “to do their own budgets, and then when they receive the budget allocations from Baghdad, [to] spend it.”
Buckler added, “That, to me, is the real future direction of where spending in the province should go. And given that we've been at it about a year and a half, I'm pleased with where it's headed.”
Salah ad Din province was allotted $80 million by the Iraq central government for infrastructure projects in 2007.
While PRTs fund and manage development projects in the areas of governance, infrastructure and microfinance, Buckler said the main goal was to build capacity so that Iraqis can “accelerate development” by themselves.
U.S. Government programs that help fund PRT planned and managed projects include: The Community Stabilization Program (CSP); the Provincial Reconstruction & Development Committee (PRDC) program; the Local Governance Program (LPG); the Civil Society Program; and the INMA Agri-business Program.
Begun in Iraq in 2005 as a Department of State program the 28 PRT teams in Iraq now consist of close to 600 400 American volunteers representing a number of U.S. Government agencies. Funding for the overall program totals more than $1 billion a year.
David Bailey, who has promoted entrepreneurial ventures in the Middle East, Central Europe, Asia and Africa for the past 15 years, told journalists about a program USAID is starting in Salah ad Din meant to stabilize communities by expanding business and employment opportunities.
The $20 million U.S.-funded project will focus on province’s cities and will have a vocational as well as a business development component, he explained.
Bailey said, “We are working closely with our military colleagues in targeting how those funds will best be spent in order to employ military age individuals as well as provide them, again, immediate jobs as well as vocational skills training that will allow them to have sustained employment.” it will focus on the key stabilization cities in the province.
In addition, USAID recently opened up the first microfinance grant program in Tikrit, one of Salah ad Din province’s largest towns, involving $1.2 million in loan capitalization for small and medium businesses, the USAID official said.
“We consider it a very good program,” he added, because “it injects badly needed loan capital into the province when banks will not lend to small business owners because of the onerous collateralization requirement.”
The loan program has gotten off to such a good start that Bailey said, “We're going to also open virtual (computerized) microfinance centers in Bayji, in Balat, in Ad Dujayl and in various other locations within the province.”
He said, “We will also be continuing to look for other sources of loan capital…to supplement the money that we already have.”