This year’s NPPR meet to stress mutual accountability

KATHMANDU, OCT 23 -

In order to make both government officials and donors accountable for better utilisation of foreign aid, a new topic—Mutual Accountability —has been included for discussion at the upcoming Nepal Portfolio Performance Review (NPPR) meeting.

The joint annual meeting of the Nepali government officials and donors to review progress and problems in donor-funded projects is scheduled to be held in Kathmandu from November 17 to 18.

A joint evaluation of the implementation of Paris Declaration 2010 prepared by the Ministry of Finance (MoF) and the donor community termed mutual accountability as the weakest point of the implementation of the declaration. “Harmonisation and mutual accountability were most weakly observed and implemented at macro-level with mutual accountability being the weakest,” states the report.

Kailash Pokharel, under secretary at the Finance Ministry, said the topic was included to also identify donors’ weaknesses, if any, in aid utilisation. “We also want to know from donors that how much aid they provide in a specific period and whether they provided as per their commitment,” said Pokharel.

However, the topic was incorporated after holding discussions with donors. Under the Paris Declaration, donors have committed to provide timely, transparent and comprehensive information on aid flows so as to enable partner authorities to present comprehensive budget reports to their legislatures and citizens. And, partner counties have expressed commitment to participatory approach.

Mutual accountability along with harmonisation between partner countries and donors on the use of a joint method to achieve aid effectiveness, ownership of the government, alignment with the government’s development strategies and result-based monitoring are the key principles of the Paris Declaration.

Despite commitment from donors that they align with the government’s development strategies in Paris Declaration, only 75 percent of the total aid has come through government agencies, according to the report.

At the upcoming NPPR, government and donors will also discuss other topics including human resource management, public financial management, and procurement and managing for development results. Donors have been channelling their resources through their own system citing weaknesses in these issues.

Puspa Lal Shakya, joint secretary at the National Planning Commission (NPC), said Nepal is yet to improve on human resources management front, under which donors have sought non-transfer of development project officials within the project period. “However, we have improved in public procurement by starting e-bidding in all procurements above Rs 20 million,” said Shakya.

In order to ensure better monitoring and evaluation, the government has also initiated implementing result-based monitoring system in 13 government offices, including Valley Traffic Office and Kathmandu Metropolititan City, according to Shakya.

The topic ‘monitoring and evaluation’, which used to be discussed at previous meetings, has been changed to ‘managing for development results’ to incorporate broader level of result-based monitoring and evaluation.

Pokharel said under ‘managing for development results’, they will see progress in projects on the basis of physical results not only the expenditure figure.

Under the topic of ‘public financial management’, they will discuss timely auditing, strengthening internal auditing, timely reporting and international standards. In order to ensure timely reporting of progress in development projects, the government has initiated ‘Treasury Single Account’ in different district financial comptroller offices, under which

the budget is sanctioned from a single account for projects across the district.

The government has sought wider participation of donors at this year’s NPPR. Besides, the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Department for International Development (DFID) of the UK, United Nations, European Union and Norway have also been incorporated in the working committee to make preparations for NPPR. “We expect participation of 300 persons from various government ministries, projects and donors at the NPPR” said Pokharel.

Source: Kantipur