The OECD's Development Assistance Committee measures donors' commitments on harmonisation in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness through achievement of three targets: 66 per cent. of aid flows through programme based approaches, 40 per cent. of missions to the field conducted jointly with other donors, and 66 per cent. of analytical work conducted jointly.
At the Third High Level Forum (HLF3) on Aid Effectiveness held in Ghana from 2-4 September, the UK played a key role in getting international agreement to speed up implementation of the Paris Declaration. The Accra Agenda for Action commits donors to
“publicly disclose regular, detailed and timely information on volume, allocation and, when available, results of development expenditure to enable more accurate budget, accounting and audit by developing countries”.
The implementation of this commitment will be monitored by the OECD-DAC and reviewed at the next High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in 2011.
Also at the HLF, 14 donors, including UNDP, World Bank, EC, Germany and the Netherlands, signed up to a new UK-led ‘International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI)’. This will enable donors to implement and go beyond the commitment made in the Accra Agenda for Action and ensure that information on aid flows is available to everyone. Donors will work together to agree before the end of 2009 an accessible common format for the publication of information about aid. The initiative will help citizens hold donors and governments to account for their promises and enable partner governments and their citizens—those who ultimately benefit from aid—to plan for and make the best use of aid.
At the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, held in Accra, Ghana from 2-4 September 2008, strong UK leadership helped to secure an ambitious ‘Accra Agenda for Action’ which will speed up implementation of the Paris Declaration.
Donors and developing countries commitments include:
A step change in donors' use of partner government systems to deliver aid, with a new target to channel 50 per cent. of government-to-government aid through country systems, thus improving alignment;
Strengthening of national, and for the first time international, mutual accountability mechanisms, allowing donors and partner countries to better hold each other accountable for meeting their commitments, with a milestone agreed for 2009;
Donors agreed to respect and support partner country-led efforts to agree a better division of labour between donors at country level—and for the first time at international level too; we agreed to start dialogue on international division of labour by June 2009. This will reduce transaction costs for partner countries and help address the issue of under-aided countries;
For the first time and beginning now, donors will provide partner governments with forward expenditure or implementation plans for the following three to five years, allowing partner countries to integrate the information in their medium-term planning and macroeconomic frameworks. This will help developing countries plan to use aid to implement their own priorities, e.g. recruiting nurses and teachers; and
Partner countries will improve their information systems, with support from donors to develop national statistical capacity. The UK announced £50 million support for a new multi-donor Statistics for Results Facility. Donors will use these systems to manage development results.
These steps will help achieve the targets set for 2010.