Seychelles, 6 September 2022 (ECA) - The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) kickstarts the applied training on the Integrated Planning and Reporting Toolkit in Mahe, Seychelles. The four-day training, taking place from 6 to 9 September 2022, is organized by the ECA's Development Planning Section located in the Macroeconomics and Governance Division, and Sub-regional Office for Southern Africa in collaboration with the National Planning Department of Seychelles.
The primary objective of the training is to improve the development planning capacities of Seychelles and to understand the functionalities of the IPRT which include alignment of national development plans with the 2030 SDGs Agenda and Agenda 2063, and monitoring the progress towards the implementation of both agendas.
Principal Secretary of the Economic Planning Department, Seychelles, Elizabeth Agathine, in her welcoming remarks, recognized the challenges of aligning the SDGs and Agenda 2063 with national priorities and objectives. Agathine explains "the IPRT platform...presents an opportunity to strengthen the domestication and alignment of both agendas respective of the country context...and will serve a vital role in enabling Seychelles to track progress made in achieving the goals, targets and indicators of the agendas.”
Ms. Agathine also points out that the toolkit comes at an opportune time as the National Planning Department is in the process of developing Seychelles’ second National Development Strategy, which will extend from 2022 to 2025. Thus, the IPRT will also play an important role in supporting the country's digital and transformative economic agenda.
In his opening remarks, Chief of the Development Planning Section of the Macroeconomics and Governance Division at ECA, Bartholomew Armah explains the triple threats posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the conflict in Ukraine and extreme weather events brought on by climate change, which have highlighted the increased importance of development planning: “For high income, Small-Island developing states like the Seychelles, the triple threats are exacerbated by the existential threats posed by climate change and by the ineligibility of high income countries for concessional financing to effectively respond to such threats," stated Mr. Armah.
Mr. Armah also notes that as countries recalibrate their development priorities in an environment of limited resources, evidence-based planning will assume growing importance. Thus, the toolkit has been designed to improve the development planning capacities of Member States through the application of the IPRT.
To ensure that resources are more closely aligned with development priorities ECA upgraded the IPRT to include an integrated financing module that features a financing dashboard linked to the planning frameworks of countries. This feature, presented during training, aims to promote value for money in the use of country resources.
This four-day event is a follow-up to the virtual preparatory training on IPRT organized by the ECA in collaboration with the National Planning Department of Seychelles from 25 to 29 July 2022.
Issued by:
Communications Section
Economic Commission for Africa
PO Box 3001
Addis Ababa
Ethiopia
Tel: +251 11 551 5826
E-mail: eca-info@un.org