Finance Ministry fails to submit foreign aid details
KATHMANDU, FEB 17:
An officer from the Office of Auditor General blamed the Finance Ministry for disobeying the Constitution.
According to the Constitution, the Finance Minister has to submit the detailed information of foreign aid inflow and expenses to the Office of the Auditor General and also to the Parliament but neither the Finance Minister nor the ministry has given any details of the aid flow and expenses to the Auditor General, said Mohadutta Timilsina of the Office of Auditor General, during an interaction on Aid Transparency organised by Freedom Forum, in the capital today.
If only the ministry follows the Constitution, there could be more transparency of foreign aid that will help make it effective, he added. “The real allocation is never known to the Auditor General, which is against the Constitution.”
In the fiscal year 2009-10, a finance minister presented a report of a technical assistance in the House, he said, without revealing the name of the technical assistance and the minister. “The report failed to mention some 87.5 per cent of the expenditure of the total of Rs 17.19 billion technical assistance that had 6.3 per cent spending on consultants, 3.57 per cent on goods and services, and 2.7 per cent on training and seminars,” he said, giving an example of transparency of foreign aid, “The 87.5 per cent of expenditure was under the others heading.”
Once transparency is insured, foreign aid can be more effective, economist Dr Chiranjivi Nepal said, adding that the country has been receiving foreign aid for the last six decades, but there has been no visible impact. Remittance has contributed more to poverty reduction than foreign aid, Nepal said. “Foreign aid has neither contributed to economic development nor in employment generation.”
“Foreign aid which is not in the priority of the country has made Nepal more dependent and has weakened the government,” he said, “If the donors are serious about Nepal’s development, they should strengthen the system, become transparent, and harmonise among themselves. “We also need foreign aid management system for more effective results.”
Freedom Forum is conducting a research on aid transparency, said chairman of the forum Taranath Dahal. “The result of the research will help make donors more transparent,” he said, adding that transparency will lead to the effectiveness of foreign aid that is key for the country’s development activities.
Aid Management Platform in pipeline
The Finance Ministry is working on Aid Management Platform (AMP) to make foreign aid transparent, said facilitator for aid management and coordination under the Foreign Aid Coordination Division of Finance Ministry Julien Chevillard. “The project under the UNDP will help increase transparency, though it will not have an off-budget aid,” he said, adding that transparency will lead to accountability too. The AMP will be useful for donors and government agencies in the beginning but could be made public by the end of the current fiscal year, he added.
Source: THT
