Facing the Challenges for addressing Accountability and Impacts of
Donor Funded Projects in Public Sector in Developing Countries
Where Private Sector Provides Technical Assistance
Introduction
It is a well known fact that all successive governments of most of developing
countries, which are becoming dependent more and more on donors for
investments on economic & social development work due to constrains in
national capital budgets possibly as a result of unsustainable increasing
public expenditure. There is a growing concern about examples of delay,
waste, mismanagement and corruption within the public sector, all of which
collectively contributed to inefficiency in translating public finance into public
services.
By and large, the general perception by public mass seems to be that the
large scale donor funded project provides the best platform for public officials
to play around with corrupted politicians. As a result of poor performance of
donor funded projects in most of developing countries during the past decade
or so, the governments come under pressure by donors as well as their own
civil societies or public mass to a varying degree to be accountable for what
has been accomplished and what is being accomplished. Public accountability
could be simply defined as obligations of an authorized public official who is
entrusted with the responsibility of managing public resources to produce
desirable results, report on the management of such resources and be
answerable for what is spent.
Although the traditional accounts and audit system still serve as important
instruments for discharging accountability it is not the best means and,
therefore, the necessity has arisen to complement it with some other
methodologies. The best way of addressing the accountability of public sector
is bringing visible signs of change and improvements to public mass in terms
of social needs. However, a question remains with the governments how they
win the confidence of citizens by showing results through donor funded
development projects based on the past experience in most of developing
countries. It is common knowledge that a colossal amount of money is spent
either as grant or loans for hiring private sector Consulting Firms for delivery
of technical expertise in design of project and implementation of projects in
developing countries across the world.
Objective
The objective of the presentation is to reveal major practical challenges faced
for addressing accountability and impacts in implementing donor funded
project in developing countries with special reference to presenter’s practical
experience
in
public
sector
where
Private
Sector
provides
Technical
Assistance. The contents of this paper solely based on Author’s consultancy
experience in six counties, namely, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Laos, Pakistan,
Sri Lanka and Timor-Leste.
Practical Scenario
In general, donor agencies prefer to work with Consulting Firms in hiring
Technical Specialists rather than hiring individual consultants and in most
projects, it has become an inherent feature to include a services of a
consulting form to provide technical assistance for design of projects as well
as implementation of projects. This is quite evident when one looks at
websites of leading funding agencies such as World Bank, Asian Development
Bank, United States Agency for International Development and European
Union.
Two role players, namely, governments of developing countries and
Consulting Firms have two different interests; In one hand, Consulting Firms
are profit oriented in both short run and long run and on the other hand,
expectation of Governments is very high quality of technical output from any
Consulting Firm for effective implementation of respective projects. It was
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observed that in most instances what matters is quality of output rather than
anything else.
It is expected that the team of Consultants provide project management
authorities and implementing agencies with required technical expertise for
project designing or implementation. Results of the project is theoretically
and realistically dependent on quality and timely technical advices provided
by respective consultancy firm to a greater extent even though there are
many other contributory factors towards successful project implementation.
As Governments are expected to be accountable for what is spent Consulting
Firms also should be equally accountable for what they are doing or in other
words, what they receive as compensation. Although it is frequently
discussed about public accountability, hardly one talk about a Consulting
Firm’s accountability to a recipient government or donor and, therefore, the
rest of the paper would discuss a couple of scenarios where accountability
fails with both parties.
Scenario1: Weakness in Project Management
There are occasions where even though the Consulting Firms are committed
and interested and delivering what is expected from them, due to reasons
such as lack of interest & firm commitment, lethargic attitude, strict
government
financial
regulations,
delayed
administrative
procedures
hampering delivery of outputs. This situation is aggravated when a nontechnical Project Director manages a technically oriented project such as
Agriculture, Livestock, Coastal Resources, Fisheries, and Environment etc. As
long as the Project Director understands technical issues and take correct
decision and go ahead with implementation he can be accountable for what
he does. The worst scenario can be expected when such a project comes
under a corrupted politician who is in charge of the respective Ministry.
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Scenario 2: Poor Technical Backstopping in the Consulting Firm
Vice versa, sometimes there is no commitment from the Consulting Firms to
deliver what they are expected and one reason for such situation is lack of
capacity within the organization. Experience of the Consulting Firm is known
as one major criteria assessing firm’s suitability to undertake an assignment
in a specialized field that relates to a specific project background or matches
requirement of project in terms of technical expertise possessed by such
firm, in short listing firms or evaluating technical proposals. Although the
firm itself has a long experience in a specific field, for instance two or three
decades sometimes there is not a single experienced technical qualified staff
member in a given specialized field or experience of such existing staff
members are inadequate. Therefore, technical backstopping is beyond the
capacity of the firm. This is required merely for managing Consultants such a
way that they produce an acceptable output to the client concerned and
providing consultants with technical backstopping if and when necessary. So,
how a firm can be accountable for their own work when there is hardly
anybody within the firm to assess quality of output delivered by the
Consultancy Team. Therefore, eternally, such consulting firms play role of a
Recruitment Agent/Job Agency.
Scenario 3: Poor Composition of Consultancy Team
When the composition of the Consultancy Team is not appropriate or has no
correct blend eventually delivery of outputs tends to be poor. In most cases,
positions are decided by the donor agency and most of bureaucrats who are
weak or non-technical administrators have hardly any “say” in such
decisions.
It
was
commonly
observed
that
there
are
non-essential
consultancy positions within the team even though some of tasks can be
combined and brought under one Consultants rather than having more than
one person. Very often, it is evident that some positions are an appendix to
the core team and unnecessarily such positions are created merely for
enhanced benefits of the Consulting Firm at the expense of opportunity cost
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of such unnecessary person months. Mostly such consultancy packages are
readily accepted by governments of developing countries as can be seen in
Request for Proposals (RFP) sent out to short - listed Consulting Firms.
Again, the fact remains that how the governments can be accountable for
such decisions.
Scenario 4: Lack of Concern for Return on Investment
There has been a trend in consultancy packages related to Agriculture,
Livestock,
Coastal
Resources,
Fisheries,
Environment
that
Economist/Agricultural Economist position is left out although this was the
most important position a decade ago. It was preferable to have an
Economist or Agricultural Economist as Team Leader rather than any other
professional. Have Economists and Agricultural Economists failed to deliver
their goods? It was a practice to prepare simple crop budgets and calculate
return on investment for sub project interventions. It seems that this practice
has sadly faded away from at least from some donor funded projects It is
interesting find out why it so? Definitely return on investment addresses the
issue of accountability to a greater extent in most cases.
Scenario 5: Financial Progress Ahead of Results
Apart from the above scenarios, there are circumstances where donors
themselves apply undue pressure on both Government and Consulting Firms
for disbursing funds to meet financial targets. This is still a common
occurrence where financial progress serves as the best and one and only
indicator to assess performance of the project while in implementation.
One key aspect of accountability is transparency in public sector and as far
as hiring Consulting Firms by donors or by governments, transparency is
absolutely lacking. Open, transparent and accountable government is a precondition for servicing public through implementation of projects. Unless
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otherwise, the credibility of the government is gone and covert unethical
behavior will result.
Finally, the best key to answer accountability is ethical behavior and moral
values of all three parties, namely, governments, donors and Consulting
Firms which would definitely contribute to a high degree of accountability.
There is a need to develop cost consciousness and to inculcate greater
efficiency and efficacy in the utilization of resources. Besides, deriving new
methodologies for determining degree of accountability and causes for lack of
accountability in this scenario is inevitable.
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