Editorial
Flexibility in aid conditionalities
Augurs well for better aid utilisation
AGAINST the backdrop of the on again and off again debates over Bangladesh's relationship with the development partners, framing of a concerted policy strategy has been a demand of the time. Especially, donor conitionalities about obtaining and utilising foreign aid have traditionally been something of a sore point with developing countries like Bangladesh. And as a member of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Bangladesh often expressed its legitimate concerns about conditions and the usual strings attached to development assistance.
The good news is the government has meanwhile signed a Joint Cooperation Strategy (JCS) with its development partners the salient feature of which will be reduction in the number of conditionalities imposed on the assistance to be provided by the latter. And further to it, towards an effective fund utilisation regime, the government is also learnt to have been formulating a result-based development framework.
We welcome the developments with emphasis on the government's signing of the first ever JCS with 18 development partners. With signing of the JCS, it is hoped that the donor agencies and nations, unlike in the past, will now be able to cooperate with the government in devising development programmes, harmonising their action plans better, mapping out of the areas where the different development partners would concentrate and in ensuring improved predictability of future aid flow. This will help avoid overlap of development projects and reduce the number of parallel project implementation units.
Particularly, the detailed annual action plan as envisaged in the JCS with the provision of joint activities to strengthen the government's aid management capacity, improved public financial management, and joint monitoring and evaluation activities would hopefully contribute to efficient use of aid and completion of projects in time.
While considering the above developments appreciatively, it would be worthwhile to note that as an aid recipient, hiring of consultancy has been a moot point for Bangladesh. In the past, project implementation was very much dependent on expertise contracted from overseas, which the aid givers insisted on more often than not. But Bangladesh has in the meanwhile attained a degree of capacity in terms of indigenous know-how and expertise. We are now in a position to provide better consultancy in view of the peculiarities of our circumstances and needs. We also note that the development partners are cognizant of it and even making use to some extent of indigenous our consultancy There is still scope for further association of local expertise in the implementation of projects.
Even so, we will always stand in need of specialised technical support until such time as we have had developed our home-grown variety of appropriate technical resources for the purpose.
In this context, it would be welcome, if a more flexible approach is adopted from the donors' side on the issue of machinery and commodity purchase, which are usually tied up to specified sources, or for that matter, the strings attached to commodity aid.
On the donor conditionalities, it would, admittedly, be not quite fair to have a sweepingly negative notion of those. In fact, all conditions are not overly stringent and impinging on our freedom of action, and in fact good for us. For instance, the issues of child labour or the development partners' insistence on improving safety precautions for garment workers including their toilet facilities or about equality of gender, which are helpful in our own interest.
Finally, we look forward to an acknowledgement and recognition of the developments partners about our marked improvement in terms of management of resources, capacity for resilience and improvement of social indicators by way of expecting strings-free support from bilateral and multilateral aid agencies.
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