Posted on 02/28/2005 11:12:08 AM PST by rightwinggoth
LONDON (Reuters) - Red tape, inefficiency and nepotism mean that only one fifth of international aid actually gets to the people who need it, aid agencies said Monday.
Not only that, but 40 percent of international aid is spent buying overpriced goods and services from the donors' own countries, Action Aid and Oxfam said in a joint report calling for urgent reform of a politically compromised system.
"First and foremost, they need to spend aid where it is needed -- on poverty reduction -- rather than channel it to their own consultancy and infrastructure industries and geopolitical allies," the report said.
It accused the United States and Italy of being the worst culprits in so-called aid "round tripping," spending some 70 percent of their aid on their own companies.
"This is the ultimate form of round tripping -- taking with one hand what is given with the other while advertising your 'generosity,"' it said, noting that the inefficiency involved inflated procurement costs by some $7 billion a year.
The report "Millstone or Milestone" also accused the international institutions of imposing impossible conditions on recipient nations and of tying the whole process up in a bureaucratic quagmire.
The report noted that in 2003 Senegal had to play host to 50 delegations from the World Bank (news - web sites).
It said the existing international aid system had grown out of the Cold War when donor countries frequently used aid to obtain political leverage and fly the national flag.
"Byzantine donor procedures and conditions have distorted incentives and systems in aid-dependent countries and undermined local capacity, hindering with one hand what they have helped with the other," the report said.
Aid was still often misdirected at high profile projects or aimed at "donor darling" countries like Nicaragua which received aid equivalent to $178 per head in 2001 compared with Niger which got just $22 a head despite a similar income level.
"Donors tend to be more concerned about the success and visibility of their project or program than the success of a country's development plan," it said.
The report complained that donor nations often bypassed local delivery networks thereby undermining them and leaving countries less able to stand on their own feet.
All aid should be untied, technical expertise should be trained locally, goods and services should where possible be procured locally and the focus should be on directly helping the poor and building local skills.
"These are major challenges to the aid system since they imply a redistribution of power between recipients and donors and a far greater openness and accountability than currently exists," the report concluded.
if I read this right, they're carping that we're buying goods over here, where there is plenty instead of buying them over there, where they ain't in the first place. I mean if there were goods there, they wouldn't need them, would they?
I remember a story from a college buddy who spent several years doing engineering consultation in Egypt in the mid-seventies...
50 school buses we "donated" by the US one year.
18 months later not a single one was running due to abuse, lack of proper maintenance, "lost" spare parts (and the fact that they were "free")!
The old saw is that "foreign aid is taking money from poor people in rich countries to give to rich people in poor countries." How true that is.
I wish the author had gone further and tried to find an example or two where things work right. There probably ARE some good examples out there, and I'd like to read more about them.
I was in Africa and saw similar things but you have to think through this. The Canadians gave a bunch of Versatile 4WD tractors. But these were models that were not selling well in Canada. Once they broke down there were no parts readily available and no money to import parts. But there was still a guard watching it 14/7.
The Africans DIDN'T LIKE Japanese cars because the Japanese were sending their worst cars over there.
There probably ARE some good examples out there, and I'd like to read more about them.
I have done two volunteer trips and seen none that worked. I would like to hear about some successful ones too.
Sounds like they're taking a page out of the U.S. public education playbook....
In other news, most dogs have four legs, most tires are round and most water is wet.
Sounds just like hundreds of U.S. programs aimed at "helping the poor" in this country.
In other words, "Send all the money to us directly with no strings attached and we will waste/squander/embezzle it ourselves, thank you very much."
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