WB to fund civil society organisations directly

KATHMANDU, JUN 06 -

The World Bank has planned to fund civil society organisations (CSOs) directly to carry out social accountability projects even as the government has been working to route all foreign aid through official channels.

Acknowledging the greater role of CSOs in making government agencies accountable through the social accountability process, the global lender is set to give money to CSOs directly to enable them to keep a watch on government activities.

“The World Bank Board of Executive Directors will be approving shortly a Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA) which will allow the WB to provide financing directly to CSOs,” said Tahseen Sayed, World Bank Country Manager for Nepal.

According to her, the GPSA will be implemented in Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Speaking at a seminar on pubic participation and accountability in the budget process involving government officials and civil society representatives, she said that the WB move would be quite revolutionary for the WB which is a government-owned institution.

She also hoped that the governments of the three countries would look at it favourably as an effort to empower citizens. She asked Nepali government officials and civil society members to contribute towards introducing citizen’s monitoring of the budget which she said would be a huge service to the country and its people.

Meanwhile, at a separate press meet, Richard Holloway, coordinator for Programme for Accountability in Nepal (PRAN), a WB project in Nepal, said that the WB would seek at least a no objection from the government to implement the programme through CSOs.

“We will talk with the Finance Ministry before disbursing money to the CSOs and seek to involve ministry officials too in the social accounting system,” he said.

According to a recent Development Cooperation Report prepared by the Finance Ministry, 30 percent of the foreign aid is still off budget which means the amount equivalent to that amount is disbursed without coming into the government’s red book.  Most of them are technical assistance or projects delivered through civil society and the private sector. Holloway said that the GPSA would also be technical assistance.

The report has also noted that only 54 percent of the total aid is actually channelled through the national treasury that uses the national public financial management system.

Finance Secretary Krishna Hari Baskota said that the government had adopted the policy of bringing all the aid through the government channel both project assistance and the technical one.

Meanwhile, the World Bank is making World Bank-related information accessible to everybody on its website under its Open Bank-Open Development-Open Government agenda.

“The World Bank has embarked on an ambitious Openness Agenda. Transparency, accountability and citizen participation are all central to this citizen- oriented approach,” said Sayed. “The World Bank has grown to realize that one of the best things we can give to the beneficiaries of the development interventions is easy to use data and access to the information from the across the globe.”

Source: The Kathmandu Post