Departments: Consultants

Lynne Featherstone
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what his Department’s spending was on research and consultancy services in 2006-07, broken down by programme.

Mr. Thomas
In total, DFID spent £179 million on bilateral knowledge and research programmes in 2005-06. This represented 4.1 per cent. of total DFID expenditure. A summary breakdown was published in Statistics on International Development 2001/02-2005/06 and the figures are reproduced in the following table.

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|Sector                             |£000   |
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|Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries|27,143 |
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|Engineering                        |35,730 |
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|Health                             |44,915 |
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|Economic and Social                |48,959 |
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|Education                          |7,638  |
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|Other                              |15,043 |
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|Total Knowledge and Research       |179,428|
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In total, DFID spent £252 million on consultancy in 2005-06. This represented 5.7 per cent. of total DFID expenditure. A summary breakdown is shown in the following table. The majority is consultancy to deliver parts of our development programme (as published in Statistics for International Development), where the services are usually provided to third parties such as recipient governments. These are funded through programme costs. The rest is consultancy to DFID as an organisation and is funded from its administrative budget. The table excludes low value contracts issued by DFID Departments and overseas offices of which there are no consolidated records held centrally.

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|                                                       |£000   |
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|Total consultancy funded through development programmes|225,248|
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|Of which:                                              |       |
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|Africa Division                                        |98,336 |
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|Asia and Pacific Division                              |56,830 |
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|Europe, Middle East and Americas Division              |54,524 |
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|Policy Division                                        |15,556 |
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|Consultancy for services to DFID                       |26,426 |
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|Total consultancy                                      |251,673|
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