Aid and corruption: how to avoid falling into the trap

THE parliamentary watchdog in Britain has released an extremely critical report of the Department for International Development.

Specifically, the report questioned the practice of giving general budgetary support to foreign governments, stating that the department does not know “whether such support provides better value for money in reducing poverty than other forms of aid”.

The report goes on to say “the countries who receive this financial support often do not have the monitoring systems to check that the funds have gone where they should. And when UK funds are paid directly to developing nations’ systems, the risks of leakage and corruption are often particularly high”.