[afro-nets] U.S. Agency's Slow Pace Endangers Foreign Aid

["Claudio Schuftan" <cschuftan@phmovement.org>]

Cross-posted from: "[health-vn discussion group]" health-vn@cairo.anu.edu.au

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/world/africa/07millennium.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

U.S. Agency's Slow Pace Endangers Foreign Aid

By CELIA W. DUGGER

The Millennium Challenge Corporation, a federal agency set up almost four years ago to reinvent foreign aid, has taken far longer to help poor, well-governed countries than its supporters expected or its critics say is reasonable.

The agency, a rare Bush administration proposal to be enacted with Bipartisan support, has spent only $155 million of the $4.8 billion it has approved for ambitious projects in 15 countries in Africa, Central America and other regions.

And the agency's slow pace is making it politically vulnerable at budget crunch time. Both the House and the Senate have slashed the Bush administration's 2008 budget request for the agency, but the Senate has gone a step further, pushing for a change that African leaders say threatens the essence of the agency's novel approach.

Eyeing the unspent billions, the Senate has proposed that Congress provide no more than half the money up front for future five-year projects, which typically come with a price tag of $250 million to $700 million. Such projects are now fully financed at the start to make sure countries have the wherewithal to finish what they start.

Agency officials and the African leaders they assist said in recent interviews that the change would be a big step backward. American foreign aid often takes the form of modest, short-term projects that are planned in Washington and carried out by American contractors and charities. But under the agency's approach, poor countries with sound economic policies and strong track records of helping their people are chosen to conceive and carry out big undertakings themselves.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation's budget now makes up less than 10 Percent of the United States foreign aid budget.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation's chief problem has been its sluggish record in getting projects beyond the planning stage to the point where contractors can actually build the roads, irrigation canals, power plants and clean water systems that poor countries say they need.

Poor countries, even relatively well-run ones, are not used to planning such complex developments and have needed more time than expected to get them off the ground.

Also, the infrastructure projects poor countries need are prone to corruption, and putting stringent accountability systems in place has consumed more time than expected.

The future of the Millennium Challenge Corporation is one of the many issues caught in the budgetary stalemate between the administration and Congress.

The administration asked for $3 billion for the agency. In their foreign aid appropriations bills, the House provided $1.8 billion, the Senate $1.2 billion.

If the agency gets the lesser Senate amount, under the current rules Requiring the money up front, Burkina Faso, a West African country that has spent more than two years qualifying for and drafting its $560 million to $620 million plan, will get nothing, agency officials said. Tanzania and Namibia are ahead of it in line.

--
Vern Weitzel 
mailto:vern@coombs.anu.edu.au