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OO RUEHBC RUEHBZ RUEHDH RUEHDU RUEHGI RUEHJO RUEHKUK RUEHMA RUEHMR
RUEHPA RUEHRN RUEHROV RUEHTRO
DE RUEHNJ #0032/01 0181759
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O 181759Z JAN 10
FM AMEMBASSY NDJAMENA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 7590
INFO RUCNFUR/DARFUR COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHEE/ARAB LEAGUE COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHZO/AFRICAN UNION COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC PRIORITY
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC PRIORITY
RHMFISS/HQ USAFRICOM STUTTGART GE PRIORITY

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 NDJAMENA 000032 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR EEB/IFD/OMA BRIANA SAUNDERS 
STATE FOR AF/C 
STATE FOR S/USSES 
OSD FOR DASD HUDDLESTON 
NSC FOR GAVIN 
LONDON FOR POL - LORD 
PARIS FOR POL - BAIN AND KANEDA 
ADDIS ABABA ALSO FOR AU 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PREL PREF SU CD
SUBJECT: CHAD: AID PROVISIONS TO GOVERNMENTS WITH 
NONTRANSPARENT BUDGETS 
 
REF: STATE 1923 
 
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SUMMARY 
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¶1.  (SBU)  This cable responds to requests for information in 
reftel related to Chad's degree of budget transparency and 
USG legal strictures prohibiting assistance to central 
governments whose budgets are not or have not been 
transparent.  Paras 4 to 10 below are keyed to questions in 
para 3 of reftel.  Paras 11 to 14 below respond to additional 
action requests in para 10 of reftel. 
 
¶2.  (SBU)  In 2009, Chad received a waiver, on grounds of 
national interest, of requirements under Section 7086(c)(1) 
of the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act to make 
improvements in budget transparency.  We believe that in the 
course of 2009, Chad has progressed on the transparency 
front, thanks to ongoing advice and technical assistance from 
the IMF, World Bank, and EU, and thanks also to its own 
efforts to reform and improve public revenue management.  In 
our view, the nation should be judged sufficiently 
transparent to warrant obligation of all USG assistance funds 
without further scrutiny. 
 
¶3.  (SBU)  If this is not deemed feasible, we believe that 
Chad should be granted another waiver on national security 
grounds so that planned USG assistance will not be affected, 
and so that cooperation on key regional stability goals 
including those affecting Darfur refugees will not suffer. 
Chad continues to host 270,000 Sudanese refugees, despite its 
own impoverished status and competition for scarce resources. 
 Any diminution in U.S. assistance might indirectly affect 
refugees as well as Chadian IPDs and poverty-stricken host 
populations.  END SUMMARY. 
 
¶4.  (SBU)  Question:  Is the Chadian central government 
expected to receive funding under the FY 2010 SFOAA?  Answer: 
 Yes.  The U.S. spends upwards of $400 million per year in 
Chad, although much of that consists of our contributions to 
UN assessed and other budgets, and to other international 
organizations and NGOs, for international peacekeeping, and 
for additional IO and NGO assistance to regional stability 
efforts and aid to refugees in Eastern Chad.  The USG's 
projected 2010 assistance benefiting the Chadian central 
government per se will be on the order of $11.6 million in 
total ($9.6 in developmental assistance, and some $1 million 
each for IMET/FMF and NADR-ATA).  Of this, $9 million is for 
a food security project that will be channeled through 
Africare; thus it does not appear to meet reftel para five 
definition of direct assistance.  An additional $600,000 is 
planned in support for girls' education, similarly channeled 
through an NGO to the central government. 
 
¶5.  (SBU)  Our planned $1 million combined in IMET and FMF 
funding for restarting mil-to-mil cooperation under TSCTP 
would/would be in jeopardy if Chad were ruled to have 
insufficient budgetary transparency, as would our $1 million 
in NADR-ATA law enforcement assistance training.  IMET/FMF 
and ATA will be used to fund training and education programs 
that focus on human rights, rule of law, and proper 
civil-military relations, which are areas of extreme concern 
with respect to Chad's security institutions.  Withholding 
assistance at a point when Chad's cooperation is needed to 
ensure regional security would be counterproductive to our 
broad strategic goals, including stability in areas hosting 
refugees, counter-terrorism, and professionalization of the 
Chadian military and law enforcement sectors.  That such a 
large percentage of U.S. spending in Chad goes to 
international organizations and NGOs, when compared with our 
assistance to the Chadian government, is a source of 
considerable tension, and is complicating relations between 
the UN and Chad.  Thus a withdrawal of IMET/FMF and AFA would 
have negative political resonance with the GoC beyond loss of 
the programs that will be funded from those sources. 
 
NDJAMENA 00000032  002 OF 005 
 
 
 
¶6.  (SBU)  Question:  Is Chad's national budget publicly 
available?   Answer:  Yes.  Yearly national budgets are 
printed by the government printing office in book form upon 
their adoption by the National Assembly and promulgation by 
the President.  They are available to the general public from 
the Finance Ministry's Budget Office once printed.  Some 
portions of military budgets are classified for security 
reasons.  Draft portions of the Chadian national budget are 
available on a need-to-know basis to international providers 
of technical assistance (including the USG) before they are 
approved by the Finance Ministry and forwarded to the 
National Assembly for adoption.  Chad's budget transparency 
improved in 2009 over 2008 in part because 2009 was a year 
lacking rebel attacks on the capital.  Thus in 2009 Chadian 
government and elected officials could focus on matters such 
as preparing the national budget, debating it in 
inter-ministerial meetings, and submitting it to the National 
Assembly for scrutiny.  In 2008, budget preparation and 
ratification were interrupted by repeated rebel incursions 
and by destruction of the National Assembly by rebel forces. 
 
 
¶7.  (SBU)  Question:  Are incomes and expenditures included 
in the publicly-available budget?  Yes.  The Chadian national 
budget as printed by the government printing office and made 
available to the general public by the Finance Ministry 
contains information on incomes and expenditures.  One local 
NGO has as its specific purpose studying national budgetary 
incomes and expenditure figures, comparing them, and 
publishing its own "citizens' guide" to the national budget. 
 
 
¶8.  (SBU)  Question:  What is the extent to which Chad's 
publicly-available budget accurately reflects actual 
government incomes and expenditures?  Answer:  The Chadian 
national budget is increasingly transparent and accurate 
thanks to the efforts of technical advisers from the IMF and 
EU, and also thanks to reform efforts on the part of the 
Finance Ministry and ongoing anti-corruption campaigns that 
President Deby has personally endorsed.  In specific: 
 
-- IMF Activities:  The IMF has had a Staff-Monitored Program 
(SMP) in Chad since April 2009 to offer training in control 
and transparency regarding public revenue management and 
budgeting.  Once the nation meets the program's full 
requirements, Chad will become eligible for HIPC debt relief. 
 In the past, Chad engaged in extra-budgetary expenditures in 
the military area in order to procure equipment used to 
counter rebel attacks.  Chad has also had a tendency to 
budget for infrastructure projects in ways that put IMF and 
World Bank-required poverty reduction programs at risk when 
the international price of oil drops.  Among the IMF's goals 
are ensuring that Chad reduces extra-budgetary spending to 
the extent possible, and that it makes a priority of poverty 
reduction by budgeting in a manner that guarantees continued 
key project funding independent of oil price fluctuations 
(see below).  The IMF is also working to ensure that Chad 
sticks to its budgets once these are approved:  in the past, 
in addition to extra-budgetary military and infrastructure 
spending from unacknowledged sources of income, there was a 
tendency for money to be diverted from the Ministries of 
Health and Education to the Ministries of Infrastructure and 
Defense even after formal budgets were adopted. 
 
-- EU Activities:  Alongside the IMF's SMP, the EU has a Euro 
13 million project in place to improve public finance 
transparency and strengthen capacity within the Finance 
Ministry regarding customs, taxation and budgeting.  In 
parallel with this project, experts from the EU worked in 
conjunction with the IMF's AFRITAC (based in Libreville) in 
mid-2009 to establish a technical assistance center in Chad; 
the center has been offering ongoing training and seminars on 
topics including decentralization, accounting standards, debt 
management, microfinance, auditing and economic 
record-keeping.  One of the EU's aims related to oil revenues 
 
NDJAMENA 00000032  003 OF 005 
 
 
is to help Chad achieve membership in the Extractive 
Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).  This will involve 
the GoC's making formal, published commitments to 
international standards of transparency with respect to oil 
income, including taking part in a four-step "sign-up" 
procedure.  The EITI's African Regional Director visited Chad 
in January 2010 at the invitation of the GoC's Minister of 
Petroleum, following a GoC decision to move forward on EITI 
candidacy.  (The GOC had earlier resisted the need to meet 
stipulations in the sign-up procedure.)  (NOTE:  Oil revenue 
accounts for 70 per cent of the GOC's total income.  If EITI 
membership encourages the kind of transparency that we hope 
it will, public information on government income will 
increase enormously.  END NOTE.) 
 
-- Chadian National Activities:  Backed by advisers from the 
IMF and EU, the Chadian Finance Ministry took action in 2009 
to deal with the effects of lower-than-expected oil revenues, 
and thus, with the relatively bleak budgetary picture that 
Chad faced mid-year.  A sub-ministry in charge of 
micro-finance and the fight against poverty was established 
in June 2009, and the Finance Ministry revised the 2009 
national budget downward and reevaluated spending priorities, 
based on advice from the IMF with respect to using oil 
revenues so as to benefit all Chadians.  The Finance Ministry 
prepared its 2010 budget in collaboration with IMF SMP 
experts.  The Ministry also instituted reorganizations of 
certain government organs, enhanced tax and customs 
collection procedures, ceased cash payments of salaries to 
bureaucrats, insisted that the Ministry of Defense "clean up 
its books" so that every soldier's identity would be known 
and every soldier paid only once, and in general pressed for 
greater accountability regarding public spending, 
particularly defense and infrastructure spending.  The 
Minister of Finance was asked to testify against other GoC 
officials charged in a series of anti-corruption campaigns 
that are still under way at this writing.  President Deby, in 
his New Year's address to the nation at the beginning of 
2010, pledged to continue the GoC campaign to eliminate 
corruption from Chadian national life.  He criticized the 
practice of "taking liberties" with public goods, and 
promised prosecution of those who accepted kickbacks or 
demanded bribes.  In response to public criticism of 
infrastructure spending in a manner suggesting cronyism, the 
Ministry of Infrastructure established a public website in 
2009 laying out details of its plans, making linkages between 
specific plans and the general well-being (including poverty 
reduction and education) and explaining methods of financing. 
 
 
¶9.  (SBU)  Question:  Have there been any events since the 
2009 review that may have affected fiscal transparency? 
Answer:  Chad enjoyed a relatively benign security situation 
in 2009 -- only one significant rebel attack, and that 
occurring outside the capital -- affording the GoC an 
opportunity to conduct its budgeting processes according to 
standard procedures rather than in the emergency manner that 
characterized planning in 2008.  The climate of relative 
stability in 2009 also allowed Chad's higher education 
institutions to function more normally; these include a 
National School of Administration, akin to France's ENA, and 
an elite new business school, akin to France's HEC, both of 
which are training future generations of bureaucrats 
according to international standards in the economic realm. 
The presence in Chad in 2009 of the IMF's SMP team and EU 
technical experts, and the World Bank's October 2009 visit to 
Chad and announcement that it would resume cooperation 
suspended in 2006 in a dispute over management of oil 
revenues, all encouraged greater transparency and 
accountability.  Ongoing anti-corruption campaigns that have 
led to investigations against ten high-ranking officials 
including several Ministers and the Mayor of N'Djamena are a 
response to rising public expectations for GoC accountability 
in an election year.  The GoC revised its 2009 budget 
mid-year in response to requests from the IMF, and prepared 
its 2010 budget in conjunction with the IMF's SMP experts. 
 
NDJAMENA 00000032  004 OF 005 
 
 
IMF sources have pronounced the 2010 budget "not a bad effort 
overall." 
 
¶10.  (SBU)  Question:  Since last year's review, what efforts 
has Chad undertaken to improve fiscal transparency?  What 
progress has been made pursuant to the 2009 demarches on the 
subject?  Answer:  See paras 6 and 7 above.  Also, Chad's 
current presidency of both CEEAC and CEMAC, and its 
cultivation of OHADA partners during the twin presidencies of 
the former organizations (including by hosting an OHADA 
summit in December 2009), have increased opportunities for 
participation in regional efforts to standardize customs 
procedures, border controls, taxation and duty 
implementation, development of new economic investment zones, 
harmonization of energy, environmental and health policies, 
development of common road infrastructure, development of 
common anti-corruption standards, and other multinational 
initiatives dependent on budget transparency throughout 
Central Africa.  In 2008, Chad adopted a national Investment 
Charter, designed to draw foreign direct investment into the 
nation.  It has been active in efforts to standardize 
commercial and business law among OHADA participants, and has 
pressed other OHADA members to adopt supra-national 
arrangements on arbitration, recovery of debts, bankruptcy, 
receivership and accounting, all dependent to some extent on 
budgetary transparency.  OHADA's supra-national arrangements 
will begin taking precedence over some local investment laws 
in January 2010. 
 
¶11.  (SBU)  Question:  What efforts has the GoC made since 
last year to improve fiscal transparency?  See paras 6-10 
above. 
 
¶12.  (SBU)  Question:  What actions have the USG, and U.S. 
officials at Post, taken to promote budgetary transparency in 
Chad?  Answer:  The USG has been more active across the board 
in 2009 than in 2008, reflecting better staffing and no 
emergency draw-downs.  Throughout 2009 and up to the present, 
we have made a priority of encouraging Chad to focus on the 
need to improve public finance management, consistent with 
our second MSP goal of promoting good governance, and 
consistent with IMF, World Bank and EU goals for Chad.  We 
have an active dialogue with Chad's Ministries of Finance, 
Justice and Morality (all of which are playing key roles in 
anti-corruption efforts), as well as with the Prime Minister, 
who is himself a strong proponent of rule of law, on all good 
governance issues.  We have also worked with the Ministries 
of Petroleum, Infrastructure and Defense to encourage 
transparent and appropriate use of oil revenues.  Corruption 
remains a serious impediment to economic development in Chad, 
but ongoing anti-corruption campaigns focused on ending 
non-transparent contracting, bribery, kickbacks, embezzlement 
and impunity appear to be having some effect, and the Justice 
Ministry -- along with the Finance Ministry, an essentially 
impartial body -- has asserted itself to insist that rule of 
law be pursued in a number of recent, highly partisan cases. 
 
¶13.  (SBU)  Question:  Has there been progress?  Answer: 
Yes.  See paras 6-10 and 12 above. 
 
¶14.  (SBU)  Updated Action Plan for improving fiscal 
transparency and promoting graduation out of the need for a 
waiver in 2011, should a waiver be required:  Current IMF and 
EU assistance will continue into the foreseeable future.  The 
goals of these organizations for Chad are the same as U.S. 
goals.  Thus our strategy should consist of working in 
concert with international partners to make clear to the GoC 
the advantages of eliminating extra-budgetary spending, 
sticking with published budgets (particularly regarding the 
tendency of Defense and Infrastructure budgets to receive 
unplanned "gains" at the expense of social programs), taking 
into account fluctuations in international oil prices when 
planning for use of oil revenues, fighting corruption, and 
continuing to move toward EITI candidate membership.  In 
concert with the EU, we should press the GoC to announce its 
intentions with respect to EITI and to begin composition of a 
 
NDJAMENA 00000032  005 OF 005 
 
 
plan of work.  We should also encourage the World Bank to 
make good on its mid-2009 commitment to restart assistance to 
Chad. 
 
¶15.  (U) Minimize considered. 
NIGRO