Aaron Batten, Economist, Ministry of Finance, Malawi, described why aid should be managed at the country level. He described the aid profile of Malawi including funds that are on-treasury, on-budget and on-plan.Mr. Batten described the problems associated with low technical capacity while managing data from multiple donors within the budget cycle. The Government of Malawi had only ad-hoc information from donors with at least half of the information unavailable to the government. This undermined the budget cycle. He described the process of implementing the Aid Management Platform (AMP) to coordinate aid with the country budget cycle. The biggest challenge was to establish consistent and timely donor reporting to the government.
Mr. Batten described the advantages of using an aid management system in Malawi. Malawi was able to tailor data standards to meet country needs. Donor funds are integrated at aggregate levels, but execution by the government is at a more detailed level. He showed some of the codes.
Mr. Batten found that timely and frequent aid information from donors is more important than accuracy for effective budget control and management. Unless aid information is given to recipients in a very timely manner it is often not very useful for budget control. The Government of Malawi accepts that some of the data may be inaccurate that will need to be fixed later.
Malawi changes classifications and modernizes functions. Therefore, systems much support this type of country level of dynamism according to Mr. Batten. Data needs and priorities change and donors need to be flexible. He concluded that donors need to be responsive and accountable at the country level to enable public financial management reform. The task for recipients is to utilize this information in a way that improves public financial management.
A survey of ICGFM attendees found that almost 1/3 of countries receive no aid information from donors.
Batten aid information management in practise malawi experiences
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Batten gestión de la información sobre ayuda en la práctica experiencias en malawi
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