How are International Development Partners Supporting Timor-Leste?

Congratulations to the Government of Timor-Leste for releasing its Development Cooperation Report for 2012 using data from the Timor-Leste Aid Management Platform.

Timor-Leste has long been at the forefront of the transparency movement.

In early 2011, the Government of Timor-Leste first launched the Timor-Leste Transparency Portal under the leadership of Her Excellency Emilia Pires. The Timor-Leste Transparency Portal set a global precedent allowing the public to interface, evaluate and analyse State expenditures in real time and is the official source for information on all external financing received by the Government of Timor-Leste.

The 2012 Development Cooperation Report continues Timor-Leste’s leadership.

In previous years, the Development Cooperation Report was generated through extensive manual data collection processes by the Development Partnership Management Unit (DPMU), Ministry of Finance, Government of Timor-Leste. Now, through the Aid Management Platform, Development Partners (DPs) update data on their financial contributions on a quarterly basis and the Government is able to collect more accurate and predictable aid data.

The DPMU can now provide external financing information to the line ministries to help formulate more accurate budgets in 2014, and to disseminate the data into more meaningful reports with analyses, like the Development Cooperation Report, faster and more efficiently.

The Development Cooperation Report includes profiles on Development Partners, current and past data about planned and actual disbursements, disbursements by district, and disbursements by executing agencies. Additionally, the overview report includes analysis of Development Partner projects and their alignment to the Timor-Leste 2011-2030 Strategic Development Plan, which is the overall guiding framework for the Timor-Leste 5th Constitutional Government.

Highlights from 2012 include:

• Timor-Leste initial combined sources budget in 2012 was $1.8 billion.
• Actual disbursements of Official Development Assistance to Timor-Leste in 2012 were $214 million in grants.
• Australia is the largest Development Partner, contributing US$ 87 million (41%).

The Development Cooperation Report is another example of how Aid Management Platform tools and data can be used for high-level analysis and information sharing. We are proud of Timor-Leste’s leadership in delivering on the Paris Declaration objectives to use country systems and procedures and the Busan Declaration that emphasizes aid transparency and harmonization. We look forward to more achievements from the first new sovereign state of the 21st century.