Threadbare aid structure

A range of donors to Pakistan have failed to disburse all or part of the monies they have pledged. The money was to support poverty reduction programmes, improve social sector services in the tribal areas and bolster reforms in the education and health services — all vital and all lagging behind countrywide. Filling in the social care blanks for Pakistan has traditionally been via foreign aid, but all too often even if the money is delivered it is not sent where it was supposed to go. Donors are aware of this and have become wary. Whatever benefits might have accrued as a result of donor finance gets eaten up by corruption and there is often a lack of capacity to spend the money even if it has been received.

Donor grants are being delayed by the failure to fulfill donor requirements and as reporting requirements get ever stricter Pakistan finds it ever more difficult to come up to scratch. The laissez-faire days of the 1990s are long gone and donor funding — which in many cases is derived from the contributions of the taxpayers in donor states — now has a layer of accountability surrounding it. There is also the issue of just how serious some donors are when they make pledges. The UAE and Saudi Arabia failed to make good on pledges of $141.9 million. Assorted projects funded by the EU valued at $215 million are incomplete because funding has not been released despite being committed.

The list goes on and is made up of a range of failures on both the donor and recipient ends of the supply chain. The problem stretches back at least 20 years. With donors unwilling to commit funds directly to the Pakistan government, and the NGOs and INGOs that work in Pakistan being often the preferred partners for donor nations, there is an obvious disconnect with the ultimate losers being the poorest of the poor at whom foreign aid is generally targeted. The Capacity Curse will hinder development for years to come, and donors need to fulfill their pledges. Meanwhile, unspent fortunes quietly make money for somebody — but not the common man.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 10^th, 2018.

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