Breaking a peanut with steamroller
Sunday, 12 October 2008
Syed Fattahul Alim
Foreign aid is still a vital input in our national development budget. Even in the current fiscal, out of the Tk 256 billion budget for the Annual Development Programme (ADP), Tk 145.90 billion, which is 57 per cent of the total ADP, is expected to come from the development partners. And it is well-known that the donor's money for development work does not come alone. For the very fact that one has to take foreign aid for its development activities implies that the recipient concerned is not qualified enough to use the money to carry out the development work on its own. Such implication, however, has to do more with the donor's perception of the recipient's capacity to utilise the aid money than the real situation on the ground.
Consider our own situation. When talking about the issue of capacity, the Bangladesh of today cannot be compared with what it was at its inception about four decades back or even further back in time at the end of the fourth decade of the last century when the British colonialists had left this part of the world. True, poverty still stares us in the face and it is also true that we are still drowned with more problems than we can solve. But then, it is also true that in spite of the stigma of pervasive corruption in the administration as well as in society at large, capacity-wise the administration is not in the same place as it was four or six decades back. Ironically though, looking at the overall aid regime, one cannot say that the donor's perception of the capacity of the client nations has undergone any change during all these years since the post-colonial times. To all appearances, the world or the part of world where nations are still dependent on foreign aid to carry out their development work, to be more specific, has hardly changed, at least in the eyes of the providers of development aid. And that is why the developing and the least developed nations like Bangladesh are still witness to all the foreign consultants and the army of advisers, who are paid at a very high rate from the allocated aid money, to look after the implementation of the project activities run with the help of foreign aid. Unfortunately for the recipient nations, they have hardly any say in the matter, because the consultants and the advisers are an inalienable but part of the deal. And the conditions implied are also too obvious-take it or leave it!
But do these costly consultants and advisers really help matters? Far from that or at least that is the experience so far. And one has to look into this particular aspect of the aid-dependent development activities that the recipient nations have made hardly any progress in all these years in spite of the tons of dollar that have flowed into those countries.
It would be wrong to think that it is the traditional left-leaning critics or the unmitigated cynics who are forever hell-bent on cursing and blaming the donors and their money for all the ills that plague the recipient nations. Of late, even the executives in the administration of the client governments, who have often to take the blame for any alleged misuse or underutilisation of foreign aid, have started to question the logic of employing the consultants to control and oversee the expenditure of the aid money in the development work.
The other day high level officials of different ministries, which are the implementing agencies of the various donor-funded projects, met at a meeting at the External Relations Division (ERD). The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) of the ERD also participated in that meeting. But what did the meeting observed? What came out is revealing! The government executives were of the view that the consultants eat up 40 per cent of the aid money. And the story does not end there either. All the paper work, the repeated visits by the various missions from the headquarters of the aid agencies, the protracted exchange of letters and other electronic kinds of communications between the local office and the headquarters of the donor agency from the time of allocation till the end of the project make the entire business of implementing the project costly and time-consuming. And at every step of the project implementation, such hassles continue without let-up. But these are part of the business as usual run by the donor's money. On the face of it, such an avalanche of papers, visits, meetings and missions emanate from the very perception of the donor agencies, whom we would like to call development partners in a euphemistic manner, that the recipient country and its government lack the capacity to put their money to good use. However, these are all about their traditional perception of things in the world of the client states. But of late, the new practice of branding nations as more or less corrupt by various watchdog organisations in the West has made matters worse for the aid-recipient nations. Now has been added to the traditional notion (that the recipient nations lack capacity, efficiency, skill, and so on) the added blemish of corruption. Since in the eyes of donor-supported anti-corruption watchdog institutions, the governments of the least developed and developing nations like Bangladesh are wallowing in corruption, the aid money they provide for development work are not safe in the hands of the executives of the recipient governments. So, how to minimise the risk? Increase the volume of paper transacted between the offices of the donor agencies situated in the recipient nations and the headquarters, impose more conditions, make the visits by missions more frequent and so on. Briefly, that is about rendering the formalities before and after the actual allocation of the aid money more complicated and difficult.
After all this tempest in the teacup is over, let us see how the real business of implementing the development work starts. Well, the recipient is government is inefficient as well as corrupt. So for the donor money to bear fruit, consultants are needed to spend the money. Then there is the need for employing foreign advisers to work for the actual implementation of the projects. Along with advisers, who are paid in astronomical amounts from the dollars meant for the development of the client nation, are also employed an army of technical assistance staffs recruited by the consultants and supervised directly by the advisers. The advisers need the very expensive, fuel guzzling vehicles and those have to be imported from abroad. The highly paid local technical staffs are also no less sahibs. They are also entitled to good vehicles according to their statuses. The advisers need the very expensive houses in the posh areas of the capital and other bigger cities of the country. The rent for those houses and all other incidental expenses are not adjusted from the advisers' salary. It is again the aid money from which those costs are usually met. There are also stationery, office equipment, etc., etc., the frequent workshops, seminars, meetings, trainings and so on. In fact, the list of procurement made from the money for the development work is far longer than given here. The government counterparts for the projects such as the project directors and some of their colleagues are also to be made happy. They are often provided with expensive vehicles and other perks and privileges. And the consultants know well how to keep the government people related to the development projects concerned happy.
As noted earlier, all this paraphernalia add to the overhead cost of the project implementation.
It all looks like the work of crushing a peanut with the help of a steamroller. And it is not surprising then that it is not the peanut, which is but the project and its beneficiaries, but the steamroller that steals the show. Now the big question is: does all this make the implementation work of the project more efficient and less corrupt? And, if the expenditure of project money with such gay abandon in the name of its efficient and corruption-free implementation is not in itself an exercise in inefficiency and (may also be) corruption, then what is inefficiency and corruption?
Foreign aid is still a vital input in our national development budget. Even in the current fiscal, out of the Tk 256 billion budget for the Annual Development Programme (ADP), Tk 145.90 billion, which is 57 per cent of the total ADP, is expected to come from the development partners. And it is well-known that the donor's money for development work does not come alone. For the very fact that one has to take foreign aid for its development activities implies that the recipient concerned is not qualified enough to use the money to carry out the development work on its own. Such implication, however, has to do more with the donor's perception of the recipient's capacity to utilise the aid money than the real situation on the ground.
Consider our own situation. When talking about the issue of capacity, the Bangladesh of today cannot be compared with what it was at its inception about four decades back or even further back in time at the end of the fourth decade of the last century when the British colonialists had left this part of the world. True, poverty still stares us in the face and it is also true that we are still drowned with more problems than we can solve. But then, it is also true that in spite of the stigma of pervasive corruption in the administration as well as in society at large, capacity-wise the administration is not in the same place as it was four or six decades back. Ironically though, looking at the overall aid regime, one cannot say that the donor's perception of the capacity of the client nations has undergone any change during all these years since the post-colonial times. To all appearances, the world or the part of world where nations are still dependent on foreign aid to carry out their development work, to be more specific, has hardly changed, at least in the eyes of the providers of development aid. And that is why the developing and the least developed nations like Bangladesh are still witness to all the foreign consultants and the army of advisers, who are paid at a very high rate from the allocated aid money, to look after the implementation of the project activities run with the help of foreign aid. Unfortunately for the recipient nations, they have hardly any say in the matter, because the consultants and the advisers are an inalienable but part of the deal. And the conditions implied are also too obvious-take it or leave it!
But do these costly consultants and advisers really help matters? Far from that or at least that is the experience so far. And one has to look into this particular aspect of the aid-dependent development activities that the recipient nations have made hardly any progress in all these years in spite of the tons of dollar that have flowed into those countries.
It would be wrong to think that it is the traditional left-leaning critics or the unmitigated cynics who are forever hell-bent on cursing and blaming the donors and their money for all the ills that plague the recipient nations. Of late, even the executives in the administration of the client governments, who have often to take the blame for any alleged misuse or underutilisation of foreign aid, have started to question the logic of employing the consultants to control and oversee the expenditure of the aid money in the development work.
The other day high level officials of different ministries, which are the implementing agencies of the various donor-funded projects, met at a meeting at the External Relations Division (ERD). The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) of the ERD also participated in that meeting. But what did the meeting observed? What came out is revealing! The government executives were of the view that the consultants eat up 40 per cent of the aid money. And the story does not end there either. All the paper work, the repeated visits by the various missions from the headquarters of the aid agencies, the protracted exchange of letters and other electronic kinds of communications between the local office and the headquarters of the donor agency from the time of allocation till the end of the project make the entire business of implementing the project costly and time-consuming. And at every step of the project implementation, such hassles continue without let-up. But these are part of the business as usual run by the donor's money. On the face of it, such an avalanche of papers, visits, meetings and missions emanate from the very perception of the donor agencies, whom we would like to call development partners in a euphemistic manner, that the recipient country and its government lack the capacity to put their money to good use. However, these are all about their traditional perception of things in the world of the client states. But of late, the new practice of branding nations as more or less corrupt by various watchdog organisations in the West has made matters worse for the aid-recipient nations. Now has been added to the traditional notion (that the recipient nations lack capacity, efficiency, skill, and so on) the added blemish of corruption. Since in the eyes of donor-supported anti-corruption watchdog institutions, the governments of the least developed and developing nations like Bangladesh are wallowing in corruption, the aid money they provide for development work are not safe in the hands of the executives of the recipient governments. So, how to minimise the risk? Increase the volume of paper transacted between the offices of the donor agencies situated in the recipient nations and the headquarters, impose more conditions, make the visits by missions more frequent and so on. Briefly, that is about rendering the formalities before and after the actual allocation of the aid money more complicated and difficult.
After all this tempest in the teacup is over, let us see how the real business of implementing the development work starts. Well, the recipient is government is inefficient as well as corrupt. So for the donor money to bear fruit, consultants are needed to spend the money. Then there is the need for employing foreign advisers to work for the actual implementation of the projects. Along with advisers, who are paid in astronomical amounts from the dollars meant for the development of the client nation, are also employed an army of technical assistance staffs recruited by the consultants and supervised directly by the advisers. The advisers need the very expensive, fuel guzzling vehicles and those have to be imported from abroad. The highly paid local technical staffs are also no less sahibs. They are also entitled to good vehicles according to their statuses. The advisers need the very expensive houses in the posh areas of the capital and other bigger cities of the country. The rent for those houses and all other incidental expenses are not adjusted from the advisers' salary. It is again the aid money from which those costs are usually met. There are also stationery, office equipment, etc., etc., the frequent workshops, seminars, meetings, trainings and so on. In fact, the list of procurement made from the money for the development work is far longer than given here. The government counterparts for the projects such as the project directors and some of their colleagues are also to be made happy. They are often provided with expensive vehicles and other perks and privileges. And the consultants know well how to keep the government people related to the development projects concerned happy.
As noted earlier, all this paraphernalia add to the overhead cost of the project implementation.
It all looks like the work of crushing a peanut with the help of a steamroller. And it is not surprising then that it is not the peanut, which is but the project and its beneficiaries, but the steamroller that steals the show. Now the big question is: does all this make the implementation work of the project more efficient and less corrupt? And, if the expenditure of project money with such gay abandon in the name of its efficient and corruption-free implementation is not in itself an exercise in inefficiency and (may also be) corruption, then what is inefficiency and corruption?