Papers from Overseas Development Institute, London
Aid, Budgets and Accountability, CAPE workshop 2005 summary paper
Paolo de Renzio
Report from the workshop which brought together policy makers, practitioners, researchers and NGOs from North and South.
http://www.odi.org.uk/PPPG/cape/publications/pdr_cape_2005_workshop_report.pdf
Does General Budget Support Work? Evidence from Tanzania
Andrew Lawson, David Booth, Meleki Msuya, Samuel Wangwe and Tim Williamson
The report evaluates the efficiency and effectiveness of budget support, as an aid modality, in Tanzania over 1995 to 2004 and assesses its contribution to the processes of growth and poverty reduction over this period. It includes a summary of the wider lessons which emerge from the experience as well as a set of recommendations, more specific to Tanzania, for improving the management arrangements for budget support. In this version, it incorporates editorial changes and minor amendments made in response to the comments received on the draft final report competed in November 2004. The report is the culmination of an interactive evaluation process which was carried out over four months (August – November 2004) and included two interim outputs – an Inception Report and a “Phase 2 Report��?, containing a preliminary assessment. The feedback received on this earlier work from stakeholders in Tanzania was an integral part of the process. Further comments on the draft Final Report have permitted some useful amendments and improvements to this, the final evaluation product.
http://www.odi.org.uk/PPPG/publications/papers_reports/TzGBSEval_ShortReport.pdf
Aid Harmonisation and Alignment: Bridging the Gaps between Reality and the Paris Reform Agenda
Andrew Rogerson
The Paris agenda on aid effectiveness emphasises support for recipient-owned development strategies, increased use of national systems and more co-ordinated and predictable donor actions. Monitorable targets for such behaviour have been agreed, but the connections with expected development benefits are as yet unproven. Alternative views of the rationale for aid agencies, transaction costs and conditionality, in which there is rarely complete preference alignment and trust between donors and recipients, introduce further complications. Four additional policy measures are identified which cannot be managed easily within the Paris agenda: better international balancing of aid allocations; new instruments with longer commitment horizons; liquidity arrangements to enable ‘scaling up’ across several countries; and independent aid rating institutions linked to market-like sanctions.
http://www.odi.org.uk/publications/programme_papers/Rogerson_DPR.pdf