11
Jun
For more than a decade, providers and recipients of development cooperation have sought to increase the effectiveness of development cooperation. In that process, developing countries are playing a very central role in continuously advocating and demanding that providers improve and change operational behaviours. An area of particular importance has emerged around the importance of development partners to provide accurate, detailed, timely and forward-looking information on development cooperation flows. Quality data on development cooperation forecasting and expenditures serves a implementation processes, and ultimately provides partner countries with ownership of their respective development paths according to national laws and procedures. As such, the availability of quality data on development cooperation leads to stronger ownership of development outcomes, as it enables governments to have full overview of their resource envelope which can then be prioritized across development objectives, all planned, budgeted and carried out under oversight by national parliaments. In order to manage the increasing flows of development cooperation, a rapidly growing number of partner countries have strengthened capacities of development cooperation management, which has also resulted in a visible boom in the number of countries who have developed, designed and implemented Aid Information Management Systems (AIMS) that capture development cooperation flows from providers.
As China becomes one of the major development partners and South-South cooperation (SSC) providers globally, there is increasing demand from partner countries for more information on cooperation information, exemplified by the release of two White Papers on Foreign Aid (2011 and 2014), or through steps for improving Chinese foreign aid management mentioned in the Measures for the Administration of Foreign Aid (2014).
As part of the global initiative to support developing countries in their quest for greater information sharing about development cooperation flows, the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) was established at the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan in 2011. In the 2014 GPEDC progress report, eleven partner countries reported on Chinese financial flows for the first time, a significant increase from previous years. These countries include Cambodia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Madagascar, Mali, Moldova, Nepal, Philippines, Samoa, Senegal, Tajikistan, and Togo.
The value of the reported financial flows from China in the GPEDC report ranges from US$1.2 million for the Philippines to US$273 million for the DRC, the total reaching over US$770 million for all the cooperation data, but also some useful information on the predictability of the financial flows, and the degree of policy alignment to country systems. Furthermore, the report provides information respective mutual accountability frameworks.
An analysis of the data provided by the eleven countries, three in-depth case studies on Cambodia, Nepal and DRC, coupled with interviews with stakeholders from other countries concerned, show that:
· Chinese embassies have become increasingly incentivized to provide information about their development cooperation, especially when asked for such information by partner country governments;
· Partner countries have increased demand on China to provide full information on its development cooperation activities and alignment with the principles of the respective national partnership policies and procedures for managing development cooperation information via AIMS; 6
· In all cases, accessing Chinese development cooperation data has required additional efforts and has led to an increase in transaction costs for the partner governments. All countries would like to see the Chinese government better align with their national systems and procedures for collecting and reporting development cooperation data in the future;
· information: the most accurate source comes from Chinese loan agreements; a second route has been the Chinese embassies themselves and a further source has been for partner governments to get in contact directly through email or phone with the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and the Ministry of Finance (MOF);
· For the countries examined, data on Chinese development cooperation flows has been national planning and budgeting systems appear to be relatively weak for almost all of the eleven countries, getting access to and gradually integrating development cooperation information into national planning processes is a continuous exercise which also depends on trust-building in terms of the quality and frequency of data sharing. For most countries, however, data collation and quality assurance remain a challenge and real barrier for strengthening their planning and budgeting processes;
· There are huge discrepancies in the data for the eleven countries reported in the survey, hat said, a cooperation data:
(i) The level of demand of the partner government itself to obtain Chinese development cooperation information;
(ii) The amount of time and staff of the partner government dedicated to engaging with Chinese counterparts both in the Chinese embassy and with ministries and other stakeholders in China;
(iii) The interest and incentives of the Chinese focal points working in the embassy but also in Beijing to provide information;
(iv) The level and quality of support provided by technical advisors working in development cooperation management bureaus in the Ministries of Finance and Planning in these countries, most commonly by UNDP, to support partner governments to engage with Chinese officials;
(v) The quality of the partner countries AIMS, the extent to which AIMS are available in the public domain, and how much partner governments actually make use of the development cooperation information provided to them;
(vi) The extent to which partner countries produce public monitoring reports on development cooperation from all development partners, since this publicity creates incentives for partners, including the Chinese embassy, to share information with partner governments in the countries surveyed.
Access and download the full United Nation Development Programme – South-South Cooperation, June 2015, report at: http://www.cn.undp.org/content/dam/china/docs/Publications/UNDP-CH-SS-Demand-Driven%20Data.pdf