The role and importance of foreign aid has not declined despite heavy criticism for some time. Globally, recipient countries and development partners are equally concerned about the efficient and effective use of aid money.  Accordingly, there have been continuous efforts to find ways to improve the use of foreign aid for the welfare of the people. In order to monitor aid effectiveness, the Paris Monitoring Survey (PMS) was globally conducted in 2006, 2008 and 2011. The Global Partnership for Effective Development (GPEDC) was established at the 4th High Level Forum (HLF) on aid effectiveness in Busan, South Korea in 2011. Following the Busan meeting, it is now understood that overall development is most effective and efficient through inclusive development.

The GPEDC aims to help nations, businesses and organisations work together to end poverty. It brings governments, the private sector, civil society and others together to ensure funding, time and knowledge to produce maximum impact for development. It also fosters engagement and knowledge exchanges in the implementation of agreements on the principles of effective development cooperation such as ownership by developing countries, focus on results, partnerships for inclusive development, transparency and accountability.

Being an active participant in international forums addressing aid effectiveness, Nepal participated in the PMS 2008, 2011 and Paris Declaration Evaluation in 2010 whose findings were presented at the Busan HLF.

In 2015, the GPEDC initiated a second round of the GMS, which is currently underway in some 76 countries, including Nepal. This survey seeks the involvement of various stakeholders during the data collection and validation process following a specific methodology and terms of reference. It also desires to see how development cooperation is linked with the result framework of the partner countries. It is expected that aid is utilised to achieve results as envisaged by the development plan of a country.

This GMS aims to provide evidence on progress, opportunities and obstacles in the implementation of the Effective Development Cooperation Commitments to support mutual accountability and stimulate and inform multi-stakeholder dialogue on how to make development cooperation more effective. Improving the quality, impact and effectiveness of development cooperation is crucial to ensure that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are achieved.

The monitoring framework of the survey comprises 10 indicators focusing on strengthening development country institutions, increasing transparency and predictability of development cooperation, enhancing gender equality, and supporting greater involvement of civil society, parliaments and the private sector in development activities. The monitoring indicators aim at measuring progress in making development cooperation more effective.

Measuring aid effectiveness in the area of mobilising development assistance remains a challenge. It is equally important but difficult to link the specific project goals to the country’s result framework. An innovation in this survey is that it seeks to involve the participation of various stakeholders including parliamentarians, civil society, the private sector and government, among others. The Ministry of Finance is the national coordinator in Nepal for the survey and leads the process of collecting data, organising multi-stakeholder dialogue for data consolidation and validation, safeguarding overall quality of data and submitting the consolidated survey to the OECD/UNDP Joint Support Team.

A successful monitoring

round will generate evidence on the progress achieved in development cooperation effectiveness since the GPEDC was established in 2011. It will also help in building political momentum, and in ensuring that the constituencies represented by the GPEDC are able to identify remaining challenges and ways to improve the effectiveness of development co-operation at the country, regional and global levels.

The Survey is not just a process of data collection and reporting. The findings should be discussed not only at the global level but also at the country level. Globally, discussions should be focused on how these stakeholders could be engaged and at the same time contribute to the development efforts of the country. Participation of the stakeholders in a few meetings related to development financing does not fulfil the objectives of the Busan commitments. Clear, specific and implementable actions should be brought forward to make the engagement of the private sector, civil society and parliamentarians meaningful to contribute to and enhance development.

To be able to provide concrete guidelines and directions to achieving the SDGs, the findings from the survey should reflect the real situation in the area of aid effectiveness across the country and provide directions on how the efficiency and effectiveness of Official Development Assistance can, where needed, be enhanced.  The next HLF to be held later this year in Kenya in November 2016 will yet again provide great opportunities for all partners in development and will be a further milestone in increasing aid effectiveness to achieve the SDGs.

Bhandari is associated with Aid Management Project in the Ministry of Finance; opinions expressed here are his own