Speed Project Quarterly Report #5 January – March 2012

The project aims to strengthen Mozambique's economic, legal, and governance systems to improve the environment for doing business. SPEED's goal is to have more companies doing more business, resulting in increased trade and investment and a stronger competitive position for Mozambican firms. The project focuses on reform of trade and investment policies, policy implementation process, and monitoring implementation of reforms. SPEED delivers training and technical assistance that builds the capacity of business associations and corresponding government institutions and catalyzes trade and investment in Mozambique. The project operates a grants fund to complement the training and technical assistance activities with associations and government. SPEED places a high premium on the use of Mozambican expertise to achieve sustainable results. The project is being implemented by DAI and Nathan Associates with the assistance of local contractors SAL & Caldeira. SPEED is a four-year $19.4 million project that started in September 2010, with funding obligations totaling $5.1 million in March 2012. Public/Private Partnership regulations were drafted and submitted to the private sector for comment in January 2012. SPEED prepared a Policy Note on the regulations, which highlighted some ambiguities, inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and omissions. Recommendations for revision included differentiating the treatment of enterprises according to their nature, simplifying the proposed institutional framework, and assigning clear responsibilities for the institutions involved. SPEED also joined the Mozambican participants attending the Africa Regional Doing Business conference in Gaborone, Botswana, from 28 to 30 March 2012. The conference enabled peer-to-peer learning on improving the business climate in Eastern and Southern African region's leading and willing reforming countries. The Mozambican team had participants from five organizations, and the conference identified four Doing Business indicators as the most challenging in the region. SPEED provides ongoing assistance to the Performance Assessment Framework of the Programmatic Aid Partners (G-19). During the quarter, SPEED helped draft an aide memoire chapter on the implementation of reforms for improving the business environment. The chapter highlighted the importance of improving the business climate to stimulate job creation, quick implementation of reforms, strong commitment and follow-up to the highest political level, and leadership and revitalization of the Interministerial Group Removing Barriers (GIRB) Economic Council. SPEED is also providing capacity support to the Center for Trade and Investment (CTA) in the form of recruiting two staff members - a Policy Analyst and the Executive Director. The Policy Analyst will be in charge of conducting analysis or studies to assess the real impact of some problems identified under the public and private dialogue framework on the private sector, while the Executive Director will ensure organizational development programs and policies for improving the business environment. In addition, SPEED developed the human resources management system for the Maputo public transport system as a follow-up of the analytical work conducted in 2011 on government policy-measures. The system includes a staff development strategy, basic rules for high-level staff, and a salary matrix under the formulation of the new salary policy. SPEED also supported the targeted preparation of the aggregate January-September 2011 and the January-December 2011 budget execution reports for the Ministry of Finance.