Kantipur Report

Kathamndu, Nov 14- Three of Nepal's major donors have verbally pledged assistance of up to US$ 1 billion 50 million between 2009 to 2011, Secretary at the Ministry of Finance (MoF) Rameshore Khanal said Friday.

Representatives of World Bank (WB), Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) made this offer at an informal meeting with MoF officials on Wednesday on the eve of the two-day annual Nepal Portfolio Performance Review -2008 (NPPR) that began Thursday.

The main objective of the two-day programme is to review ongoing and pipeline foreign aided projects in terms of their implementation efficiency and effectiveness, Khanal said addressing the inaugural function.

Talking to reporters, he said the pledged aid amount will be used in four sectors - agriculture, employment generation, social sector and infrastructure over three years in order to take the peace process to its logical conclusion of peace and development. "The major concerns of donors are corruption, leakages and time over-runs of projects," he said.

The theme of this year's NPPR is 'Strengthening Country Systems for Improved Portfolio Performance' or strengthening a country's institutions for development management rather than donors using their own yardstick to measure the effectiveness of development programmes. According to Krishna Gyawali of MoF, a country system enhances aid effectiveness by ensuring country ownership and leadership.

This is the eighth time NPPR is being undertaken in Nepal. While the first five reviews were initiated by WB, ADB and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), since 2006, the government of Nepal has been taking the lead. The country heads of WB, ADB, JICA and DFID in their presentation

gave an outline of the activities of their organisations in Nepal and pointed out areas that needed to be worked on.

In her presentation, WB Country Director Susan Goldmark said monitoring and evaluation systems were weak, there was insufficient public debate on financial accountability and procurement procedure was deteriorating due to weak capacity and collusion between bidders, among other reasons.

Source: The Kathmanud Post, 14 November 2008