1 session 3: aid instruments and the prsp finnish aid in a prs context helsinki workshop 19-22 may...
TRANSCRIPT
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Session 3:Aid instruments and the
PRSP
Finnish Aid in a PRS ContextHelsinki Workshop19-22 May 2003
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Shifting aid paradigms
Planning Adjustment CDF / PRSP
• Market Failure• Govt-led/top down
• Investment led • Projects • Planners/engineers
• Donors fill resource gap• External TA
• Marginal role for M&E
• Govt. failure• Market-led
• Get prices right• Policy reform• Economists• Donor determined resource envelope• Conditionality
• Donor monitoring of policy impl.
• Situation-dep. failure• Country-led
• Institutions • Pol/instit. reform • Multi-disciplinary• Partnerships• Aid coordination• Ownership
• Results-oriented• Participatory M&E
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When is aid effective?
• Aid works best where policies are ‘owned’ and institutions (rules of the game) are supportive
• Fewer conditions and linked to performance • Managed and monitored using national systems with opportunities for public participation
• Coordinated and aligned with national priorities
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Past weaknesses• Ex ante conditionality – a weak/
imperfect lever on policy change
• Hence, weak country ownership or leadership of major reform processes
• Projects undermined by poor policy & weak attention to systemic issues (institutions & political economy)
• Fungibility & poor links with national budgetary processes
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Past weaknesses• Multiple/duplicative projects
defined by donor priorities; limited scale and high transactions costs:
- Proliferation of PIUs- Off-budget/non-transparent aid flows
• Poverty focus driven by project cycles & a ‘disbursement culture’
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Implications for external partners
• Effective aid requires broader agreement on country priorities
• Financing must be supported by policy dialogue at macro and sector levels• Institutional/systemic reforms including budget processes (PEM/PFM) • Rethink conditionality and the meaning of aid partnerships
• More focus on results
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The new aid architecture• Poverty reduction (results) overriding focus –
MDGs / PRSPs
• Shift towards process and outcome-based conditionality (participation & voice)
• Emphasis on longer-term assistance
• Policy coherence, moving ‘upstream’, scaling-up
• Importance of domestic accountability
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Aid instruments in a PRSP context• Shift from stand-alone, off-budget projects towards on-budget
& integrated investments aligned with national strategy
• Shift towards joint/pooled funding of sector programmes & general budgets aligned with national strategy
• Less earmarking, more emphasis on results
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• Jointly agreed indicators and common performance assessment frameworks
• Harmonised rules/procedures & shared approaches to risk assessment (CFAA/CPAR)
Aid instruments in a PRSP context
• Ex ante assessments of poverty & social impacts; participation & voice (PPAs)
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Implications
• Business as usual no longer acceptable
• Increased alignment of donor strategies, tools and practices with national PRSs• Working with national systems & processes, including those for monitoring• Harmonisation across external partner procedures
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Implications
• Partnerships increasingly based on mutual accountability
• Transparent mechanisms for performance assessment (when funds are on or off)• Improved assessments of country context and risks – better political analysisNew aid modalities also require evaluation work, to clarify understandings and test results …
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New aid modalities: new challenges for aid evaluation
• Strong arguments for general budget support, but can it be evaluated?
• Initial work for DFID and DAC has produced a logframe, spelling out immediate and medium-term results with a focus on institutional benefits that seem likely to improve poverty outcomes
• Work is continuing, to turn this into a full evaluation framework
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Uganda pilot enquiry suggests
• Reduced transaction costs and greater predictability are hard to get immediately
• There are improvements in domestic accountability, starting with line ministries and districts answering more to budget authorities and less (directly) to donors
• It is hard to distinguish effects of GBS from effects of other factors
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Key finding from Uganda• Government is much clearer than most on
what it expects from GBS (PEAP Vol. III)• But donors use different and inconsistent
concepts: a warm but fuzzy notion of partnership + quite traditional faith in conditionality to get them out of problems
• Need to define and agree the specific rules of behaviour that apply to the GBS “club” - rules about exit, voice and loyalty
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Note
• For further details, see General Budget Support Evaluability Study and Glasgow Workshop Report, on the website