Aid transparency has been a matter of considerable concern in development discourse of Nepal as well as other developing countries. Although aid constitutes a major part of our national development initiative too, there is as yet little transparency in the flow or distribution of such aid.
Several scientific and systematic approaches have been developed at the international front for better delivery and utilization of aid, designed with the best interest of both the recipient and the donor in mind. In Nepal, more than 50 percent of development budget is foreign aid dependent. This suggests that a significant amount of money enters the country in the name of development aid. However, whether this money reaches the right place, and whether it is spent correctly, remains a question yet to be explored.
INTERNATIONAL TOOLS
Several innovations in the international arena are geared at ensuring financial transparency, especially in the foreign aid domain. One such innovation is the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), which underscores the need to make the aid data more accessible and comparable. For this, the initiative strives to create a common reporting and information publishing system which could be used by the external development partners (read: donors). The overall goal of the Initiative is to make information on aid spending easier to access, understand and use. Even as it sets guideless for publishing information about aid spending, it does not create new database or replace the existing system. Instead, it aims to “build on, and go beyond” the existing and already agreed system.
So far, 29 international aid and development agencies, including DFID, Hewlett Foundation, the World Bank, European Commission, and the five bodies within the UN system (the latest signatory being the UNICEF) have subscribed to the IATI initiative. It has developed a two-pronged strategy for information sharing—one relating to project details and the other to future planning of concerned organization. This means, those who subscribe to IATI principles thus want donors to publicly disclose regular, detailed and timely information on the volume, allocation and results of development expenditure, when available.
Another initiative in this regard is Publish What You Fund Campaign, which is also linked to IATI. Interestingly, the Campaign’s four priority areas appear exclusively motivated by the growing recognition of Right to Information (RTI) movements and related legislations that consider information part of citizen’s ‘right to know’ and that it should be proactively disclosed for public knowledge. Its four priority agendas stipulate that: information on aid be published proactively; such information be timely, accessible and comparable; everyone has the right to request and receive information on aid; and promotion of right of access to information.
Similarly, Aid Info is another initiative spearheaded by Development Initiatives in the UK. It attaches great significance to aid transparency in poverty alleviation. It maintains that poverty reduction would come about more quickly when information on aid can be accessed quickly, easily and cheaply.
There is another initiative also, known as Open Government Partnership (OGP). A government-led initiative originally promoted by eight countries including the UK, the US, Brazil and Norway, the OGP aims to make state mechanisms more transparent and accessible to citizenry. For this, the member states commit to ‘making policy formulation and decision making more transparent, soliciting public feedback through channels, and deepening public participation in developing, monitoring and evaluating government activities.’ Forty-five other nations are likely to join the Partnership soon; they are now in the process of drafting formal commitments in this regard.
The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005) forwarded an important framework constituting five core principles for allocation and utilization of development assistance. It was developed with the belief that aid should inspire the feeling of ownership amongst the beneficiary; that the projects run through donor aid should align with local priorities as determined by local authorities; that the projects be result-oriented and reflect mutual accountability, both on the part of donors and recipients.
ACCOUNTABILITY
As the Paris Declaration suggests, the accountability issue is very important to ensure aid effectiveness. And the best way to ensure accountability is to ensure transparency in the way aid is managed and used. In Nepal, voices are often heard against donors, especially non-state international donors, against their perceived lack of transparency and effectiveness. At an interaction in Kathmandu recently, some professionals even questioned the rationale of invisible foreign aid, hinting that such aid had contributed to neither economic development nor employment generation. Although there are also some liberal critics who argue that aid tends to perform better in social rather than economic sphere of development, such as education and health, this cannot be an excuse to justify the flow of aid that is not accounted for.
On the one hand, policymakers argue that more than half of the nation’s annual development budget depends on foreign aid, while, on the other, we have economists saying that the remittance and the private-sector output are what constitute the principal share in Nepal’s economic caliber. How much, then, is the share of foreign aid in this? As the inflow of foreign aid cannot be denied, the scenario indeed corroborates the fact that most of the foreign aid coming into Nepal is unaccounted for.
Accountability is described and practiced in various ways in various places.
Commonwealth Foundation, in one of its research findings, suggested that “while the specific ways in which accountability is practiced vary from country to country, the underlying principles are the same.” Simone Galimbarti wrote in one of his recent articles Changing Paradigms of Aid-Effectiveness in Nepal, “Accountability, in its pure essence, is about common responsibilities to deliver the best service at the best value for money, with highest level of participation of the local beneficiaries.” Asserting that effective aid will be achieved when the accountability agenda is fully endorsed, Galimbarti explains how transparency and access to aid-related information could serve the purpose of accountability.
Finally, while the motto of this article is not to outright question the transparency of foreign bilateral and multilateral donors working in Nepal, but to let all concerned stakeholders know that charity begins at home, and the more accountable and transparent the benefactor, the more accountable the recipient.
The writer heads Department of English, RR Campus, Kathmandu
chiranjibikafle@gmail.com
Related story
