Economic Opportunity Mailing List Archive

["Vinay Chand" <<address removed>>]

Dick Tinsley raises points which will go to the heart of the next phase of this 
Consultation debate and maybe the moderators would prefer if it were held under 
public policy.

Before discussing how DFID can help best we need to take account of the fact 
that with tens of billions of dollars allocated every year by Governments and 
donors, very little actually appears to get through in the way of effective 
development of agriculture. There appears to be a big gap between the 
development business and the development process.

If we look at agricultural policy, in nearly every country there are a whole 
series of plans and initiatives that pledge support to laudable objectives 
using politically correct jargon at any one time. Yet, there have been 
contributions to this debate particularly those that addressed the role of 
agricultural ministries, that indicate that very low priority is often given to 
the ministries. They are often short of funds and influence. Most important 
they are often concerned with strengthening their ranking as reflected in 
budgets. They too seek to justify funding using almost identical jargon.

Implementers at the regional level are particularly starved of cash for their 
normal day to day existence. They are part of a large institutional structure 
and need money just to exist. Their ability to provide extension or applied 
research or infrastructure is thus often severely depleted. To me they often 
appear to be black holes capable of absorbing unlimited funds.

That brings us to the donors, the major ones having large disbursements to make 
but often with depleted specialist staffing. The temptation is to cut costs and 
delegate. Some of this delegation is for implementation as in the case of 
contributions to NGOs, co-finance and through multinational aid agencies. There 
are also contributions directly to the latter to meet their costs of operation. 
Multilateralism is becoming increasingly popular again.

Then there are the consultancy companies who used to have considerable in house 
expertise and many of the best ones still do but are increasingly recruiting 
agents for experts such as myself. Here again, the temptation is to delegate 
and cut costs with the consultancies with considerable in-house technical 
ability being replaced under new contract procedures by those who are low cost 
employment agencies. Pressure is there to treat this as a volume business and 
hiring sometimes appears to be like hiring coolies rather than experts. There 
are virtual companies out there now who have no corporate technical expertise 
or commitment, their only motivation is to maximise margins.

All the above are part of a growing and gigantic development business. They are 
supposed to be working to assist the development process. Identifying 
opportunities and directing resources. However, there is inevitably a tendency 
to provide paper solutions to paper problems. Most projects are declared a 
success because it is in the interests of donors to show they are doing a good 
job, agencies to justify prestige and funding and governments because they need 
more cheap money. It becomes a mutual interest club. Care has to be taken to 
keep aid effective and steer through all these natural and understandable 
pitfalls. I don't think there are adequate safeguards of oversight. Not enough 
quality external evaluations. Not enough internal technical expertise to guide 
procurement.

Consulting farmers is nearly impossible in the sort of top down approaches that 
are being followed. Sometimes I think that no one wants to talk to the farmers. 
They are often treated as if they are in the way of well thought out 
developments. Emphasis is then given to the need to educate them to participate 
in the development process. The discrediting of co-operatives has greatly 
weakened their voice. 

That brings us back to budgetary contributions, multilateral vs bilateral, 
focus or general, special project vehicles, long term vs short term targeting, 
evaluation procedures and taking ownership and responsibility for projects. 
Some things are easier to monitor than others such as a loan for roads or a 
power plant. Delivery is very obvious to check. Unless we in the business can 
demonstrate that we are indeed helping, sooner or later there will be taxpayer 
fatigue and disillusionment.


Best wishes,

Vinay Chand,
230, Finchley Road,
London NW3 6DJ, UK
Tel: 44-20-7794 5977
Fax: 44-20-7431 5715
<address removed><mailto:<address removed>>