The Aid Coordination Unit aims to coordinate all resources to align with national objectives by improving relationships with existing partners, strengthening implementation of the aid management policy including capacity building programs for its staff.

Dialogues between government partners continue to be strengthened through various initiatives such as the execution of workshops, one of which was held in July 2019. The workshop educated project officers on the government investment project processes in place. Apart from this, the unit facilitated two other technical development corporation partnership meetings which was attended by traditional bilateral and multilateral partners like the Asian Development Bank. These technical meetings are part of DSPPAC’s efforts to better coordinate donor resources to align with national objectives. It specifically gave participants guidelines on how to engage with government agencies from project initiation to the final report phase.

The Aid Coordination Unit assisted in the preparation of the Vanuatu Aid Management Policy (AMP) that was tabled in DCO/COM in 2019 and it continues to negotiate for resources from development partners to implement the AMP. The unit further aims to improve communication and coordination between DSPPAC, development partners, line ministries and DoFT by collaborating with OGCIO on the development of the APM system. Other collaborations with central government agencies were also undertaken this year to review this database system to ensure that all GIP information are captured and are relevant to government central agencies for good decision making.

Internally, the unit progressed with the digitization of all physical records. This will improve accessibility and avoid the risk of valuable records being lost. It was also part of the unit’s program to train relevant officers from each Ministries on how to use the APM system however this is a plan in progress that may be realized in the following year.