PHA-Exch> U.S. Agency’s Slow Pace Endangers Foreign Aid

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Vern Weitzel <vern at coombs.anu.edu.au>
crossposted from: "[health-vn discussion group]" health-vn at cairo.anu.edu.au


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/world/africa/07millennium.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

U.S. Agency's Slow Pace Endangers Foreign Aid


By CELIA W. DUGGER

The Millennium Challenge Corporation, a federal agency set up almost four
years
ago to reinvent foreign aid, has taken far longer to help poor,
well-governed
countries than its supporters expected or its critics say is reasonable.

The agency, a rare Bush administration proposal to be enacted with
bipartisan
support, has spent only $155 million of the $4.8 billion it has approved for
ambitious projects in 15 countries in Africa, Central America and other
regions.

And the agency's slow pace is making it politically vulnerable at budget
crunch
time. Both the House and the Senate have slashed the Bush administration's
2008
budget request for the agency, but the Senate has gone a step further,
pushing
for a change that African leaders say threatens the essence of the agency's
novel approach.

Eyeing the unspent billions, the Senate has proposed that Congress provide
no
more than half the money up front for future five-year projects, which
typically
come with a price tag of $250 million to $700 million. Such projects are now
fully financed at the start to make sure countries have the wherewithal to
finish what they start.

Agency officials and the African leaders they assist said in recent
interviews
that the change would be a big step backward. American foreign aid often
takes
the form of modest, short-term projects that are planned in Washington and
carried out by American contractors and charities. But under the agency's
approach, poor countries with sound economic policies and strong track
records
of helping their people are chosen to conceive and carry out big
undertakings
themselves.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation's budget now makes up less than 10
percent
of the United States foreign aid budget.


The Millennium Challenge Corporation's chief problem has been its sluggish
record in getting projects beyond the planning stage to the point where
contractors can actually build the roads, irrigation canals, power plants
and
clean water systems that poor countries say they need.

Poor countries, even relatively well-run ones, are not used to planning such
complex developments and have needed more time than expected to get them off
the
ground.

Also, the infrastructure projects poor countries need are prone to
corruption,
and putting stringent accountability systems in place has consumed more time
than expected.

The future of the Millennium Challenge Corporation is one of the many issues
caught in the budgetary stalemate between the administration and Congress.

The administration asked for $3 billion for the agency. In their foreign aid
appropriations bills, the House provided $1.8 billion, the Senate $1.2
billion.

If the agency gets the lesser Senate amount, under the current rules
requiring
the money up front, Burkina Faso, a West African country that has spent more
than two years qualifying for and drafting its $560 million to $620 million
plan, will get nothing, agency officials said. Tanzania and Namibia are
ahead of
it in line.
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