Ministry of Finance and Economic Development MoFED, in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund UNFPA, has ended a three-day Mid-Term Review Meeting and Training of Implementing Partners IPs at the Bo City Club House in Bo.

UNFPA Assistant Country Representative, Ms Mariama Diarra-Sesay, said UNFPA believes that such training was crucial and important in enhancing the capacity building process of IPs and acclaimed them for being audited by an internationally acclaimed auditing firm which described partners as qualified, an indication that they are up-to-date.

Ms Diarra-Sesay also noted that UNFPA works in partnership with the government, other agencies and civil society organizations to advance and promote the work of the organization.

She briefed participants on UNFPA's Business Plan (2012-2013) underscoring that population dynamics focuses on achieving universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights, reduction of maternal mortality and accelerating progress on the ICPD agenda and MDGs respectively and encouraged participants to learn new skills to be able to meet the challenges that lie ahead of them in various programme areas and urged participants to commit themselves to the training.

Giving the background objective of the training, Mr. Gbessay Kargbo, Programme Officer, UNFPA, attached to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development said the training would improve the capacity of IPs on the implementation of programme delivery through National Execution (NEX) and highlighted that the interactive session would promote their understanding on the Harmonized Approach to Cash Transfer (HACT), capacity on the data collection analysis and use of data in programming. He noted that the training would help them to map the way forward as well as achieve the overall objective of UNFPA in retrospect.

Ibrahim Sesay, Measurement and Evaluation Officer and Chairman of the opening session, informed his audience that the country programme was coming to an end, hence he articulated on its impact and evaluation so as to put IPs on a sound footing to have a fair assessment of the evaluated activity.

Sesay said evidence based advocacy data is a powerful tool for lobbying a strong case for arguments reiterating that data collection would enhance better policies and programmes to be used to track, analyze and disseminate population trends to create and manage sound policies for development.

Abu Bakarr Tarawally, Financial Analyst, UNFPA, gave a succinct presentation on why auditing is important, areas to be audited, sound internal control and reasons to maintain asset register and how assets are disposed of and defined audit action plan as one based on audit recommendations and explained how to prepare an Annual Work Plan AWP.

Charles Owe, International Operations Manager, UNFPA gave an analytical overview of the National Execution Audit Management System (NEXAMS), defined certain terminologies including Combined Delivery Report (CDR), Harmonized Approach to Cash Transfer (HACT), Types of Audit Opinion which include: Unqualified, Qualified, Adverse and Disclaimer amongst others.