Chapter 5. Impact of Mali’s food and agricultural policies 157
Total actual spending has grown even more: it increased by 82 percent from 2004 to 2010, reaching 132.3
billion FCFA. In relative terms, however, the agricultural budget allocations have declined from almost 15
percent of total government spending in 2004 to about 12 percent in 2009, while actual spending was at a
similar level of 11 percent in 2004 and 2009 (Figure 2)^1.
Figure 2. Agriculture in total government expenditure in Mali: planned and actual spending, 2004-2009 %
Source: Authors, based on CPS and MEF (2011).
Although, in relative terms, the trends show the importance of agriculture in the total government
budget declining slightly, the current level of spending meets the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture
Development Program (CAADP) recommendation of allocating 10 percent of the overall budget to
agriculture and rural development (including national resources and aid), as expressed in the 2003
Maputo Declaration.
3.2 Composition of public expenditure in support of agricultural and food sector in Mali
Data collected at country level allow for a good disaggregation of expenditure, funded from national
resources and foreign aid, which is allocated to the agricultural sector. About 100 projects and
programs were identified and grouped according to the MAFAP classification, as outlined in the project
methodology (MAFAP, 2010). Collected data covered the 2006 to 2010 period. However, for some of
the expenditure, data on policy measures were missing for the most recent year. In such cases, estima-
tion methods were provisionally applied, until the most recent data can be obtained from the country.
The results are shown in Table 4.
Agriculture-specific expenditure accounts, on average, for almost 70 percent of expenditure in support of
food and agriculture development. The level of this expenditure in overall agricultural support increased from
about 60 percent in 2006 to 80 percent in 2010. In terms of the level of spending, the agriculture-specific
expenditure almost doubled over the analysed period, while agriculture-supportive expenditures increased
only slightly (Figure 3).
(^1) At the time this paper was drafted, data on the total government budget were not available for 2010.
0,0
2,0
4,0
6,0
8,0
10,0
12,0
14,0
16,0
18,0
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
agriculture - budget
alloca on (% of total)
agriculture - actual
spending (% of total)
Maputo declara on target
%