[Vnbiz] FW: DEVELOPMENT: Aid for the Poor, Not for the Consultants

[Quan Phung]

Dear All,

I am not sure if you have read this below but there is no harm to re-send it
onto you all.

Best regards

Quan

-----Original Message-----
From: Nguyen Van Duyen [mailto:duyen.nguyen at sdc.net] 
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 11:02 AM
To: Quan Phung; Le Duc Chung
Subject: DEVELOPMENT: Aid for the Poor, Not for the Consultants 

-----------------------
DEVELOPMENT:
Aid for the Poor, Not for the Consultants 

Moyiga Nduru 
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 5 (IPS) - No less than a quarter of annual development
aid -- about 20 billion dollars -- is being used by donor countries to
fund technical assistance of sometimes dubious worth, says ActionAid
International in a new report.
The study, titled 'Real Aid 2', was launched Wednesday by the
Johannesburg-based non-governmental organisation (NGO). As with last
year's 'Real Aid', it examines how development funding is spent. 

The term "technical assistance" refers to research, training, and the
services rendered by consultants -- some of whom command fees that
ActionAid finds excessive. 

According to the report, based on 2004 data, it typically costs about
200,000 dollars a year to keep an expatriate consultant on staff. School
fees and child allowances account for more than a third of this expense,
which could be reduced with greater use of local advisors. 

"Money is being spent on consultants who are earning up to 1,000 dollars
a day," Caroline Sande Mukulira, South Africa country director for
ActionAid International, told IPS Wednesday. 

Notes the report, "High salaries paid to expatriate advisors...can also
cause significant resentment among counterparts and the public in the
south." 

"In the Ghana education service headquarters, government officials
receive about 300 dollars a month, what a relatively inexperienced
Ghanaian consultant could expect to earn in a day, and a foreign
consultant in a few hours," it adds. 

The report also mentions a former UK-funded consultant's claim that
their daily take-home pay in Sierra Leone was the same as the monthly
salary of the auditor general. 

Perhaps more alarmingly, however, these high-priced advisors may fail to
deliver lasting benefits. 

'Real Aid 2' cites the case of the Bagamoyo irrigation project
undertaken in Tanzania with Japanese support, where farmers were trained
in the use of pumps supplied by the Japanese, in the 1990s. As a result
of the rising cost of diesel and the lack of local expertise to maintain
the machinery, the project's success has been limited. 

In addition, says ActionAid, technical assistance is often far less
neutral than the term would imply. 

"They (donors) continue to use technical assistance...to police and
direct the policy agendas of developing country governments, or to
create ownership of the kinds of reforms donors deem suitable," notes
the report. 

"Donor funded advisors have even been brought in to draft supposedly
'country owned' poverty reduction strategies." 

Technical assistance that is too expensive, or ineffective, amounts to
"phantom aid," observes ActionAid -- as opposed to the "real aid" of the
report's title, which leads to discernible improvements in poor nations.


The report also identifies other trends that turn real aid into phantom
aid; these include counting debt cancellation as aid, requiring aid to
be spent on goods and services from donor countries irrespective of
whether these offer the best value for money -- and poor donor
co-ordination of aid. 

"Between 2005 and 2006 80 percent of all contracts awarded by DfID
(Britain's Department for International Development) went to UK (United
Kingdom)-based firms. In their rhetoric, they will say the money went to
aid. In reality, the money remained in the UK,'' said Mukulira, who also
took issue with refugee-related domestic costs that certain rich
countries catalogue as aid. 

"Switzerland and Austria are particularly notorious. When you see
figures from their aid budget, 15 percent of it is spent on refugees
living in their countries." 

All in all, ActionAid estimates just under half of all aid to be phantom
aid. 

According to 'Real Aid 2', the inefficiency of technical assistance is
"an open secret within the development community." Still, says
Moreblessings Chidaushe of the Harare-based African Forum & Network on
Debt & Development, an NGO, poor nations are struggling to change the
way funding is administered. 

"It is difficult for poor countries to negotiate the type of aid they
get; it's lack of resources. Either you take it or you leave it. If you
take it, you take it with conditions. If you don't, you end up with
nothing," she told IPS Wednesday. 

ActionAid proposes a number of solutions for this situation, notably
that developing nations make their own determinations of what technical
assistance they need. 

Recommendations to donors include a call for them to make as much use as
possible of the resources in poor countries targeted for assistance,
rather than looking abroad. 

As the report's author, Romilly Greenhill, notes in a statement, "Aid
needs to help the poorest, not line the pockets of western consultants."


"Too much aid continues to be...designed and managed by donors. It is
tied to their countries' own firms, is poorly coordinated and is based
on a set of assumptions about expatriate expertise and recipient
ignorance." (FIN/2006)



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