Paris in Juba

How are donors doing on their Paris Declaration commitments in Southern Sudan?

GoSS will be conducting an assessment sometime over the next year, but here are a couple of quick observations.

Generally a pretty good effort on harmonisation – see the Joint Assessment Mission, the Joint Donor Team, and the Multi-donor Evaluation.

Not so great on predictability. At Paris in 2005,

Donors commit to:

Provide reliable indicative commitments of aid over a multi-year framework and disburse aid in a timely and predictable fashion according to agreed schedules.

and 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 at Accra in 2008,

Beginning now, donors will provide developing countries with regular and timely information on their rolling three-to five-year  forward expenditure and/or  implementation plans, with at  least  indicative  resource allocations  that developing countries can  integrate  in their medium-term planning and macroeconomic frameworks. Donors will  address any constraints to providing such information.

Figures from the GoSS Donor Book suggest that there is a significant  gap between budgeted and actual expenditures by Donors across all sectors,

and also that there is a serious lack of information on commitments for the medium-term.

This one is easy. We can do better than this.