This week, on 18 December, the Central Finance and Contracting Agency (CFCA) as the Latvian development cooperation agency signed an agreement with the German development cooperation organisation "GIZ" on the implementation of the project in Uzbekistan "Good governance – Support to Capacity Building for the Public Administration of Uzbekistan". The agreement was signed on behalf of the CFCA by its Director Anita Krūmiņa.
"We are pleased that the Uzbek and German partners have positively assessed the knowledge and experience of Latvian experts in the implementation of public administration reforms and human resources development. As a result, we have signed the first contract in the history of our Agency, with funding from Germany, to transfer Latvian experience to Uzbekistan. In this project we plan to organise various thematic training programmes and expert consultancy for senior and middle managers of the Uzbek public administration. In this way, we are targeting Latvia's contribution as a member of the European Union (EU) also in the field of development cooperation, which is one of the EU's foreign policy priorities," emphasises A. Krūmiņa.
The project activities in Uzbekistan are planned to be implemented over a 15-month period in the following areas: strengthening the capacity of public institutions in strategic planning and coordination of reforms, human resources development in public administration, digital transformation and strengthening e-government, as well as promoting women's leadership in public administration. The project will involve as partners the competent Latvian public administration institutions according to the project objectives and fields of activity. The total funding of the project is EUR 999 157 - German government funding for development cooperation projects.
With the signing of this agreement, the CFCA is continuing parallel work on the preparation of a similar format experience and knowledge transfer project specifically in the field of anti-corruption, which is also planned to be implemented in Uzbekistan. This is the first large-scale development cooperation project to be implemented in Central Asia by the CFCA as the Latvian Development Cooperation Agency. Since CFCA gained the status of a development cooperation agency last year, it has already organised experience exchange and training visits to Latvia for delegations from various countries, as well as ensured participation of Latvian experts in development cooperation training events abroad.