ERD starts evaluation of donors' commitment to aid effectiveness

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FE Report
The caretaker government (CG) has started to evaluate the donor community's commitment to aid effectiveness, while also harmonising the external assistance regime.
"We've started the exercise … It's important that the government evaluate the donors' commitment in making aid work for the developing nations," an official at the Economic Relations Division (ERD) said.
In 1995, the world's wealthy nations and international donor agencies gathered in Paris to strike a deal to harmonise the global aid regime aimed at making aid more effective for the poorer nations.
"The evaluation, a follow-up of the Paris Declaration, will be a joint exercise with the active involvement of donors," the official added.
A high-level taskforce on harmonisation implementation headed by the ERD secretary will monitor the evaluation process, the ERD officials said.
The officials noted that the evaluation report would be presented at an international conference to be held in September 2008 in Ghana. The Ghana conference is expected to take stock of the progress of Paris Declaration on aid harmonisation.
A total of 12 indicators of aid effectiveness were developed as a way of tracking and encouraging progress against the broader set of partnership commitments.
Targets for the year 2010 have been set for 11 of the indicators and are designed to encourage progress at the global level among the countries and organisations adhering to the Paris Declaration.
The Paris Declaration is an agreement to which the international community committed to continue to increase efforts in harmonisation, alignment and managing aid for results with a set of indicators.
The declaration lays down a practical, action-oriented roadmap to improve the quality of aid and its impact on development.
The Paris Declaration promotes a model of partnership that improves transparency and accountability on the use of development resources. It recognises that for aid to become truly effective, stronger and more balanced accountability mechanisms are required at different levels.
At the international level, the Paris declaration constitutes a mechanism which donors and recipients of aid are held mutually accountable to each other and compliance in meeting the commitments will be publicly monitored.
At the country level, the Declaration encourages donors and partners to jointly assess mutual progress in implementing agreed commitments on aid effectiveness by making best use of local mechanisms.
Meanwhile, the quarterly meeting of the Local Consultative Group (LCG), a club of the country's bilateral and multilateral donors, will be held next month.
According to figures available with the ERD, out of the total $44.83 billion foreign aid to Bangladesh disbursed until June 2006, project aid accounted for $27.653 billion (61.68 per cent), commodity aid was $10.907 billion (24.33 per cent) and the food aid was $6.269 billion (13.99 per cent).
About 34 bilateral and multilateral donors provide loans and grants to the country for financing different development programmes. Among the donors, World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB), Japan, UK's Department for International Development, USA, UN, European Commission, Islamic Development Bank are the major ones.
Of the bilateral donors, Japan tops the list in terms of cumulative disbursement followed by USA and Canada.
On the other hand, the World Bank remains the country's top multilateral donor, followed by the ADB.