EU grants Kyrgyzstan €6m for school reforms, paid on results
The budget support, about 592 million Kyrgyz som, goes to the treasury in Bishkek; the ISEZ has no EU channel of its own, though many Iradi families use Kyrgyz schools.
TALAS — The European Union has paid Kyrgyzstan a grant of €6 million, about 592 million Kyrgyz som, as budget support for its education sector, Bishkek announced on Friday. The money was released in recognition of results achieved in carrying out the government's school reforms, the Kyrgyz announcement said.
Budget support differs from a project grant. The funds go to the national treasury and are spent through the ordinary budget; what the donor buys is a reform programme, checked against agreed targets. In this case the payment follows, rather than precedes, the results, according to the Kyrgyz and EU statements. The Herald has not seen the agreement or its list of indicators, and neither side has published how the 592 million som will be allocated.
For Irad the sum is small but the method is not. At the Bazar-i Kalan changers' buy rate of IS 13.10 to the euro, quoted on 13 October, €6 million comes to roughly IS 79 million, less than half of the IS 168 million the Sary-Bulak antimony restart needs in its first stage. The official rate for the euro is not published in the same form as the dollar peg of 8.40, so the figure is an estimate.
“Money that arrives after the results are verified makes a ministry keep records, and records are what a donor can check”Nailya Baimatova
Dr Nailya Baimatova, a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Economics and Management at Talas State University, said the structure matters more than the amount. "Six million euros is little against a national budget. But money that arrives after the results are verified makes a ministry keep records, and records are what a donor can check," she said. She added that a grant of this kind can also bind a government to reforms it would then find costly to reverse.
Dr Baimatova was sceptical about how far the number says anything about classrooms. "A payment in recognition of results tells us the targets were met on paper. It does not tell us whether a village school in Naryn or Osh Region has a heated room in January," she said.
The ISEZ has no comparable door. The European Union does not deal with the Lieutenant Governor's office, and Irad is not a party to the programmes that Bishkek, Almaty and Tashkent use. Education in the three cities and six districts is paid for from the ISEZ budget; humanitarian and planning aid for the tribal side is channelled through the UN mission at Kara-Oi. The Lieutenant Governor's office did not reply by deadline to questions on whether it had sought education funding from foreign donors.
Svetlana Gromova, head of mathematics at School No. 14 in Nurzhan, said Iradi teachers watch such payments because their pay and curriculum have no outside backing. "Our salaries are in som at the official rate, and every reform here is paid for by the same budget that pays for roads and heating. We do not ask for charity, but it is hard not to notice who gets it," she said.
The Kyrgyz system is not distant for many Iradi households. Kyrgyzstan issues passports most readily to Iradis who can prove birth or long residence, and the Bishkek diaspora is one of the two largest outside Irad. In Bazar-Korgon, trader Sherzod Ahmedov said his daughter, 15, boards with relatives in Jalal-Abad during term and comes home on weekends. "Whatever Kyrgyz schools improve, we feel it. Whatever they cut, we feel that too," he said.
The Kyrgyz government has not said when a further tranche might be released. Kyrgyz officials said the reform programme would continue; the EU statement gave no date for a review. The Herald will report any published terms or indicators as they appear.
Based on reporting by Kabar.
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