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The way forward after Accra: Eurodad-GMF roundtable debate
17 September 2008
As the dust settled on the outcomes of the Accra High Level Forum on aid effectiveness, Eurodad and the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) organised a roundtable discussion on the 15th September in Brussels to debate the way forwards. How are these commitments going to be implemented? The roundtable was chaired by the Honourable Jim Kolbe, Senior Transatlantic Fellow at GMF
Lucy Hayes from Eurodad started the discussion with a presentation of a new Eurodad/GMF report addressing two of the issues much discussed in Accra, channelling aid through developing country financial and procurement systems, donor division of labour. This report “Alignment and harmonisation: challenges for US and European donors” examines progress on these two areas in Ghana and Tanzania, two of the “best performers” of developing countries in improving their own systems. Use of developing country systems is one area where donors have made least progress, even in countries that have made them more transparent and accountable. Donors in many cases simply have not met their side of the bargain. Participants were invited to comment on the report which will be finalised and published shortly.
Panellist responses were given from the United States and the European Commission, two of the three donors (the third being DFID) examined in the report. George Carner, USAID representative to the OECD/DAC argued that the outcome of the Accra HLF reflected a shift in emphasis in discussions about aid away from harmonisation towards ownership, and that in this regard better alignment was more important than more donor harmonisation. Follow-up from the US in implementation of the Accra commitments will include developing a policy which will set out more specifically when the United States will use country systems. He admitted that predictability was still a tough issue for the US but that there is appetite for reforming the current aid system in Washington at present.
The European Commission was represented by Maciej Popowski, Director for horizontal issues at DG Development. He supported the US argument that discussions about aid needed to move away from a donor-recipient approach to a partnership approach but differed in his arguments about some of the ways to do that. The EC has said that it will put in place a coherent implementation plan based on the Accra commitments that their programmes will have to comply with. High on the EC’s priorities is to use more budget support as a way of supporting developing country ownership and use of their systems – indeed most developing countries have not surprisingly said that budget support is their preferred aid modality. Budget support quickly comes up against resistance in the United States, but the US representative commented that he would welcome a greater mist of aid modalities and that they needed to move away from an aversion to budget support.
The Commission will also be active in moving forwards an agreement on principles of Division of Labour. For this to get buy-in from developing countries, any process will need there to be a cross-country consultation with space provided for meaningful input from developing countries. The EC argued that division of labour needs to focus on results, this being another argument in favour of international dialogue on cross-country division of labour. But it appears that there is still some reluctance from the United States to enter into discussions on this latter point.
A couple of participants supported the report’s recommendation that there needed to be more investment in parliamentary oversight of aid with more attention being paid to monitoring of national systems. One representative from the Sierra Leone embassy welcomed the EC’s proposals for MDG contracts but lamented the fact that 90% of countries do not qualify for it.
All panellists agreed that there needed to be more transparency around aid, both in terms of the amounts they provide and their discussions around aid. According to the US representative, this included being transparent about their rationale for doing or not doing something, including when they could not use country systems for example. The EC representative said that transparency on the donor side was particularly important in terms of mutual accountability, and highlighted that the donors had agreed to go further in rooting out corruption in donor countries and to track, freeze and recover illegally acquired assets.
Related documents:
Eurodad analysis of the outcome of Accra
Eurodad´s 2008 Paris Survey Analysis
The way forward after Accra: Eurodad/ GMF roundtable debate
: Kb