New Zealand Embassy Manila, The Philippines

Development cooperation

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade manages the New Zealand Aid Programme and provides policy advice to the New Zealand Government on international development issues.

The New Zealand Aid Programme’s mission is to support sustainable development in developing countries in order to reduce poverty and to contribute to a more secure, equitable, and prosperous world. Over time this approach will allow developing countries to fund their own social services (for example health and education services) and further development activities.

New Zealand's development assistance is focused on the Pacific region, but also supports programmes in Asia, southern Africa and Latin America. New Zealand also works with multilateral agencies to address poverty, conflict, governance issues, and humanitarian crises worldwide.

New Zealand is committed to providing effective aid, as agreed by the international community. This includes support for the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action

For more information visit the New Zealand Aid Programme website

New Zealand’s aid to the Philippines

New Zealand Aid Programme activities in the Philippines are based on the overall aid programme mandate and the specific development challenges in the Philippines.  New Zealand’s development support for the Philippines for 2012/13 is NZ$4 million.

New Zealand’s aid activities in the Philippines are guided by New Zealand’s international development policy statement.  There is a particular focus on complementing ASEAN’s community-building goals through the agreed flagship areas of scholarships, agriculture, disaster risk management, and fostering young business leaders.

Current projects are:

  1. Integrating disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation  - a program of UNDP that funds 30 additional Philippine provinces to integrate disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation into their local development planning and decision-making processes, by undertaking the necessary vulnerability and adaptation assessments and the production of multi hazard/risk maps.

  2. Project ReBUILD - Resilience capacity building for cities and municipalities to reduce disaster risks from climate change and natural hazards.  The project intends to conduct a flood modelling exercise in the river basins of Regions 2 and 6 of the Philippines.  The project will produce community based and managed early warning systems; and improve the planning and coordination of the relevant authorities.  This will include the formulation of risk-based regulatory and development planning guidelines.

  3. Restoring agricultural livelihoods in conflict-affected areas supports the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) in restoring agricultural-based livelihoods of internally-displaced people in Maguindanao province who have returned to their original farms, and to make them less dependent on external food aid.

  4. Camiguin coastal resource management project - aims to enable local government units to establish integrated coastal resource management system with local communities' participation and involvement.

  5. New Zealand-ASEAN Scholars awards a regional scholarships initiative providing post-graduate awards to courses of study relevant to agreed sector interests.