The Government of Switzerland through the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) purchased the medical equipment for the emergency departments of hospitals, basic equipment and cars for the family medicine centers for the total amount of 800’000 CHF within the project “Health Facilities Autonomy” supported by the Ministry of Health of the Kyrgyz Republic.

“It is so important that our contribution within our health projects gets the strong support of local authorities and personnel of the health facilities. I am very impressed by the level of commitment of all stakeholders, in particular the family doctors, the nurses and the management of the health facilities and also by the support of local authorities” – said Véronique Hulmann, Ambassador of Switzerland to the Kyrgyz Republic.

The “Health Facilities Autonomy” project is a contribution to the national programme "Den Sooluk" which has been implemented since 2015.  The project aims to improve access of rural population to medical services and to enhance the effectiveness and quality of health care services by increasing the autonomy of health care organizations and optimizing referral systems. The project implements activities for efficient use of infrastructure, financial, personnel and logistical resources. During this trip, the Swiss Ambassador also inaugurated laundry facilities of four hospitals. This is part of another project on infection control.

Around 50 doctors and 250 nurses provide medical care to more than 190 thousand people in these three rayons. The new medical equipment will improve efficiency and quality of medical care for the local population as well as access to medical services.

A well-balanced fiscal policy lays the ground for broad-based economic growth. In view of strengthening the capacities of the Kyrgyz authorities in formulating and implementing  effective macroeconomic policies, in capturing and assessing fiscal risks and in promoting fiscal transparency, this five-day training, tailored to the needs of the Kyrgyz Republic, was organized for representatives of Government agencies directly involved in the compilation of fiscal statistics.

The first workshop on this topic, in which six Kyrgyz officials participated, took place in November 2016 in Baku. Following this event, the IMF undertook a series of in-depth consultations with the Kyrgyz authorities in May this year, in order to further enhance the fiscal data compilation and to define the next steps to be taken to continue improving fiscal transparency.

Mrs. Ivana Jablonská, the project manager from the Statistics Department of the IMF congratulated the Kyrgyz authorities on the significant progress they have made in recent years in improving the coverage, timeliness and consistency of fiscal statistics. She highly appreciated the commitment of the Kyrgyz compilers and stressed the importance of inter-agency co-operation in the compilation of various data subsets of macroeconomic statistics.

The officials of the Ministry of Finance, National Statistical Committee, National Bank and the Social Fund demonstrated keen interest in learning the conceptual framework of the international standards and best compilation practices. The appropriate combination of lectures and case studies helped them to apply the newly acquired theoretical knowledge on practical exercises adapted to the Kyrgyz reality. The work on case studies provided a good opportunity to understand the practical application of fiscal statistics for the national policy making and cross-country comparisons.