Government of Timor-Leste

The Minister of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Fidelis Manuel Leite Magalhães, met, on January 25^th, 2022, at the Government Palace, with the National Executive Director of the Compact Development Team (CDT-TL), Ambassador Constâncio Pinto, responsible for the compact development team of development projects funded by the U.S. agency Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).

During the meeting, the next steps to be taken and the respective schedule were analysed, to prepare the negotiation of the agreement and the project implementation programme, which should take place next March, in Washington, United States of America. The signing of the compact is expected to take place in Dili in May or June of this year.

The goal of this program, worth about US$ 400 million, is to reduce the incidence of diseases in the country, by improving the drinking water treatment, sanitation, and drainage system in Dili, and to improve the quality of Secondary Education, by establishing a Training Centre of Excellence for secondary school teachers and school leaders.

It should be recalled that MCC, an independent cooperation agency, selected Timor-Leste in December 2017 as eligible for the implementation of a programme to promote economic growth, aligned with national development priorities.

In July 2018, Minister Fidelis Magalhães signed an Initial Funding Agreementwith the Deputy Vice President of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), Jonathan Brooks, for the establishment of a team, embedded in the Millennium Challenge Compact programme, responsible for identifying the economic sectors to be developed during programme implementation.

This team was officially established in March 2019 and since then has been working together with focal points from the relevant ministerial lines and with MCC delegations in defining priority areas of the programme.