ASSESSING AGENCY EFFECTIVENESS AND BUILDING CAPACITY FOR MUTUAL ACCOUNTABILITY

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ASSESSING AGENCY EFFECTIVENESS AND BUILDING
CAPACITY FOR MUTUAL ACCOUNTABILITY

• Matthew Martin
• Debt Relief International
• 3rd MfDR Roundtable
• Hanoi, 7 February 2007

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STRUCTURE

• Introduction and Context
• Assessing Agencies the Views of 36 HIPCs
• Using the Assessments to Build National Aid
  Strategies
• Using the Assessments at the International Level
  (donors/groups)

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INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT

• HIPC Capacity-Building Programme works at demand
  of 36 HIPCs to build (unleash) capacity to
  manage government financing (orig. debt relief)
• Funded by six DAC donors (Austria, Canada,
  Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, UK)
• Capacity-building organised in country by
  sustainable regional organisations run by
  developing countries working out of job
• Presentation based on country results/views
• Earlier summaries prepared for UNDP and UK CFA,
  currently updating for ECOSOC
• For more details see www.development-finance.org
  and www.hipc-cbp.org.

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METHODOLOGY - PROCESS

• Designed through consultative process with all
  government aid managers and Ministers lasting 12
  months, to ensure all key concerns of countries
  included
• Clearly benchmarked setting quantifiable targets
  against donor best practices and Paris
  commitments
• Evaluations continually updated since 2002 1/3
  of countries each year now moving to 1/2
• Evaluations conducted in country by 20-30 aid
  management officials and based on examining data
  and documents, not opinions simultaneously
  builds capacity
• Can be/is being applied to all funders (incl
  multilateral, bilateral, vertical
  funds/NGOs/ECAs, commercial)
• Constantly developing at country request
  currently adding in new criteria on quality of
  results, cost-effectiveness
• Also analyse effectiveness of own
  policies/procedures

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METHODOLOGY - CONTENT

• Based on 34 criteria under 22 groups relating to
  policies and procedures
• Includes detailed evaluation of progress against
  Paris, but goes beyond to include eg
  conditionality, flexibility to finance against
  shocks, coverage of all key sectors of PRS
• Policies concessionality, types of aid, channels
  (on-budget), sectors (PRSP and all priorities),
  TA (country-led and genuinely capacity-building),
  flexibility (against shocks or for new country
  priorities), predictability (multiyear, aligned
  disbursement calendar, disbursed on schedule),
  conditionality (number/enforcement/delay), policy
  dialogue (activism and alignment with country or
  BWIs)
• Procedures conditions precedent (PIUs, CPF,
  appraisal, financial and legal), disbt methods,
  disbt procedures separate from government (PSI,
  accounts, reports, audits), procurement
  procedures (untying, local sourcing),
  harmonisation (joint missions, analytical work),
  alignment with partner PFM and procurement - and
  delays at all stages
• Advocacy of and responsiveness to genuine mutual
  accountability

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RESULTS

• Overall priorities different from Paris worst
  areas are flexibility against shocks and
  excessive conditionality
• MULTILATERALS VS BILATERALS
• Multilaterals better at on-budget, untying
• Bilaterals better at concessionality, less
  conditionality, fewer conditions precedent, more
  advance disbursements
• INDIVIDUAL DONORS
• Best performing multilaterals IDA, some UN, EDF,
  IFAD, IMF
• Some non-traditionals perform bettergtsome DAC
• But high degree of variation across partners due
  to different performance by donors

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DONOR/CREDITOR POLICIES
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DONOR/CREDITOR PROCEDURES
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WHAT FOR ? USING RESULTS FOR NATIONAL AID STRATEGY

• Vital to design own strategy principles (eg
  including non-Paris aspects)
• Then discuss further with donors not abandon
  but clarify policies
• Do own monitoring of donors from data/documents
  not rely on self-reporting, validate vs budget
• Build sustainable government capacity not use
  consultants
• National Compendia of Donor Practices
• Complement Paris Surveys (or sole source) to set
  baselines
• Global Compendium of Donor Best Practices
• Through exchange among 36 HIPCs
• Compare National and Best Practices to plan
  further potential/planned improvements

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WHAT FOR ? USING RESULTS FOR NATIONAL AID STRATEGY

• Design donor-by-donor strategies to accelerate
  alignment, spread best practice and set
  donor-by-donor annual targets
• Aggregate to work out seriously prospects for
  Paris and other improvement
• Diversify (the issue for most LICs) using
  knowledge of good performers in other countries
• Or rationalise donors if cant improve, to make
  aid effective
• Negotiate constantly to improve donor performance
  on each project
• Refuse offers of bad funding (free riders) in
  order to enhance aid effectiveness
• Publicise donor performance to accountable to
  targets
• Improve own performance of government
• Use independent monitoring to resolve tricky
  issues

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USING RESULTS AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL (1)

• FOR EACH DONOR/CREDITOR
• Should organise annual partner consultations
  where HQ can be told by group (less retaliation
  risk) about strong/weak points and discuss how to
  spread best practices and reduce variability
  (except where justified by partner performance)
• Needs to go beyond performance at country level
  to assess global issues eg allocation criteria,
  scaling up, orphans
• Can also be informed of partner views about eg
  relative performance of multilaterals, NGOs,
  vertical funds
• Should be assessed under Paris by degree to which
  sign up to bilateral targets at national level
  and organise annual partner consultations
• Self-evaluations/independent evaluations should
  include strong, comprehensive partner evaluation
• Also vital partners understand Paris and have
  frank discussions with donors about progress on
  partner indicators

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USING RESULTS AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL (2)

• REGIONAL DISCUSSIONS
• Meetings of regional recipient governments with
  regional donors and regional organisations to
  express views
• Key role of regional organisations in assembling
  and expressing views (but who is independent ?)
• GLOBAL DISCUSSIONS
• Africa Partnership Forum needs to be more
  Africa-led in assessing Monterrey/Gleneagles
  commitments
• Why Africa so privileged in G8 ? Why not similar
  discussions with Asia and Latin America groups ?
• Division of labour to play to strengths DAC (at
  least to collect Paris info through normal data
  and report in Peer Reviews), Independent 3rd
  party to write global report, IMF/World Bank to
  disseminate through GMR ? ECOSOC to discuss at
  high-level ?

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WHAT IS NEEDED ?

• DONOR POLITICAL OPENING
• Clear demonstration that countries can go beyond
  Paris both in breadth and ambition
• Opening to bilateral targets (Mozambique?,
  Rwanda)
• Not all donors will move use best practice
• Not all partners will achieve ? (like-minded,
  capacity)
• PARTNER SELF-CONFIDENCE
• Being prepared to discuss honestly with partners
• Moving from paper-pushing to accountability
• Learn best practices in choosing best aid for
  results
• CAPACITY-BUILDING
• Massive needs of technical officials in
  evaluating, forecasting and negotiating aid
  alignment
• Vital role of parliamentarians, AGs, civil
  society in assessing not just execution of
  spending but results
• Major shift in all three or little chance of
  Paris/MDGs