A new consensus on aid management has been emerging. Key aspects of this is an agreement on avoiding the high transaction costs of a large number of parallel donor mechanisms and of donor demands to recipient countries and replacing this with recipient country leadership and donor support for capacity building within recipient countries. Closely related to this is the focus on results (as focus on inputs, activities and processes would easily lead to micro management by donors). A number of statements, Monterrey, Rome, Marrakech and Paris formulated by donors and recipients in the period 2002 to 2005 express this consensus. The Monterrey Statement of Heads of Multilateral Development Banks dated March 2002 has the title ‘Better Measuring, Monitoring and Managing for Development Results’. This two-page statement argues for collaboration and cooperation among development partners, taking account of country priorities and constraints, and for country capacity building for managing for results.The Rome Declaration on Harmonisation, February 2003, states:“We in the donor community have been concerned with the growing evidence that, over time, the totality and wide variety of donor requirements and processes for preparing, delivering, and monitoring development assistance are generating unproductive transaction costs for, and drawing on the limited capacity of partner countries. We are aware of partner country concerns that donors’ practices do not always fit well with national development priorities and systems, including their budget, programme, and project planning cycles and public expenditure and financial management systems. We recognise that these issues require urgent, coordinated, and sustained action to improve our effectiveness on the ground.We attach high importance to partner countries’ assuming a stronger leadership role in the coordination of development assistance, and to assisting in building capacity to do so.” Based on the Rome Declaration, which was endorsed by 28 recipient countries and more than 40 multilateral and bilateral development institutions including Danida, DAC elaborated a useful guideline: DAC Guidelines and Reference Series: Harmonising Donor Practices for Effective Aid Delivery. This document includes the Rome Declaration.The Joint Marrakech Memorandum, February 2004, with the title ‘Managing for Development Results’ defines five core principles for ‘Promoting a Harmonised Approach to Managing for Development Results’:
Finally, the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, March 2005, up-dates and sums up much of the substance of the previous statements. It does so under the five headings of Ownership, Alignment, Harmonisation, Managing for Results, and Mutual Accountability. Under each of these, it formulates a number of commitments – by donors, by partner countries, and by both jointly – as well as a series of indicators with targets attached for 2010, which will enable the stakeholders to monitor the progress in implementing the Declaration’s agenda. In introducing the purpose of the Paris Declaration, the assembled Ministers of developed and developing countries and Heads of multilateral and bilateral development organisations state, that they “resolve to take far-reaching and actions that can be monitored to reform the ways we deliver and manage aid…(and)…recognise that while the volumes of aid and other development resources much increase to achieve (the MDGs), aid effectiveness must increase significantly as well to support partner country efforts to strengthen governance and improve development performance”.
