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”.

This is of particular interest to the Irish taxpayer as our own aid programme provides general budgetary support to two of the countries the report criticises: Tanzania and Mozambique.

According to the last Irish Aid annual report, of the €32 million allocated to Tanzania, €10m is given in the form of budgetary support — essentially money that the Tanzanian government can use for whatever it wishes.

Similarly, of the €43m allocated to Mozambique, €6m is for budgetary support. Both of these countries have a poor record when it comes to dealing with corruption.

Earlier this year four Tanzanian ministers were forced to resign due to two separate corruption scandals — only a matter of weeks after then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern announced that aid to Tanzania would rise to a total of €170m over the next three years.

Mozambique does not fare any better. The country’s own attorney general once described the country as being “plagued by incompetence and corruption”, while the 2007 Global Integrity Report called the state “very weak” when it came to anti-corruption measures.

In light of this British report and in the current climate of growing economic uncertainty, surely it is time seriously to examine whether the practice of handing over huge sums of money to governments with a track record of waste and corruption is the best use of taxpayers’ money. We in GOAL have consistently advocated that our Government adopt the ‘direct aid’ model whereby Irish aid money would only be given to projects where we can guarantee it is getting to the poorest of the poor.

This could be easily done using Irish project managers who would consult with the local communities to find out exactly what is needed to lift those communities out of dire poverty.

We would know where every penny ends up as we would be the ones who keep control of the purse-strings. By adopting this model we cut out the corrupt governments and instead direct our aid directly to those that need it — the world’s poor.

John O’Shea

GOAL

PO Box 19

Dun Laoghaire

Co Dublin