evaluation of finland’s aid for trade
DESCRIPTION
Presentation held at House of Estates, Helsinki, 29th August 2011Kate Bird, Liz Turner, Maria Suokko, Laura Rovamaa, Joseph Muraguri GathiiTRANSCRIPT
Evaluation of Finland’s Aid for Trade
Kate Bird, Liz Turner, Maria Suokko, Laura Rovamaa, Joseph Muraguri Gathii
Säätytalo, Helsinki29th August 2011
1. Introduction2. Aims and methods of the study3. Findings and recommendations
What is Aid for Trade?
Source: OECD
Finland’s AfT priorities
Sectors• Agriculture• Forestry• Energy
Themes• Private Sector• Information Society• Environment• Cross-cutting
themes
AfT categories• Building productive
capacity• Economic infra• Trade policy and
regulations
Geographical focus• Countries• Regions • Multilateral
organisations
AfT categories covered by the evaluationTrade policy and regulations (TP&R)- Approximately 8% of Finland’s bilateral AfT (2006-09; disburs.)- Bulk of support provided through multilateral organisations
Economic infrastructure (EI)- Approximately 20% of Finland’s bilateral AfT (2006-09; disburs.)- Main areas of intervention related to AfT are energy (including
environment) and ICT (e.g. Tanzania, Zambia)
Building productive capacity (BPC)- Approximately 72% of Finland’s bilateral AfT (2006-09; disburs.)- Main areas of intervention related to AfT are PSD, agri-business,
forestry, agriculture and mining
1. Introductionntroduction2. Aims and methods of the study3. Findings and recommendations
Aims of the evaluationRationale
Share lessons-learnedMake practical, concrete recommendations (particularly on Finland’s future AfT policy and support)
Purpose Assess the present AfT Action Plan (targeting, organizational set-up and implementation)
Main objective Present an overview of Finland’s AfT to help the MFA to enhance its role and effectiveness
Overall approach
• Thematic evaluation – Three thematic case studies (Economic Infrastructure, Building
Productive Capacity and Trade Policy and Regulations)
• Systemic approach
• Four phases– Inception phase; desk study; field study; final reporting
Methodology
• Evaluation matrix– Matrix developed, based on ToR
• Document review– Review of a sample of 21 bilateral and 14 multilateral project
and programme documents• Key informant interviews
– MFA officials, embassy staff, donors, government and private sector representatives and implementing organisations
– In six partner countries in Africa and Asia– 11 international and multilateral organisations in Geneva and
Brussels
Evaluation criteria (1)
• Relevance – Intervention is in line with beneficiary needs and policy
environment• Coherence
– Policies taken into account in planning and implementation (Finland’s and partner country’s)
• Complementarity– Interventions supporting one another and partners contributing
usefully• Co-ordination
– Two or more development partners working well together (mobilising aid or harmonise activities)
Evaluation criteria (2)• Efficiency
– Good use of resources to generate outputs/ results (quantity, quality, time)
• Effectiveness– Intervention has achieved what it set out to
• Impact – Has there been progress towards the overall objective(s)
• Sustainability – Continued benefits from intervention after external support ends
• Finnish added value– The added value provided by Finnish support
AfT – conceptual framework
1. Introduction2. Aims and methods of the study3. Findings and recommendations
Find
ing
1 Linkages between sectors and the wider economy, including trade, are not always well understood and articulated.
Reco
mm
enda
tion
1 Improve understanding of trade context by identifying national and regional binding constraints to trade through deeper reviews of existing analysis or through jointly commissioning gap-filling work.
Find
ing
2 Some MFA officials and implementing partners understand Finnish AfT as Finnish aid for Finnish trade (in other words, trade promotion), partly because of ambiguity around the promotion of Finnish Value Added. Re
com
men
datio
n 2 Clarify the purpose of
AfT, identifying the relative importance of trade promotion for Finnish companies, products and expertise versus development objectives for partner countries, including Finnish Value Added.
Find
ing
3 The AfT Action Plan is relevant and in line with the overall Development Policy Programme. However, there is no clear conceptual framework showing how AfT contributes to enhanced trade performance of different sectors.
Reco
mm
enda
tion
3 Develop a conceptual framework that better articulates the links between AfT, pro-poor growth and poverty reduction, indicating how sectoral interventions can link to the enhanced volume and value of goods traded by partner countries.
Find
ing
4 Few AfT interventions articulate how their interventions will achieve trade-related outcomes. Most focus on inputs, activities and – rarely - outputs.
Reco
mm
enda
tion
4 All interventions classified as AfT should have a results chain identifying the contribution that they will make to trade-related outcomes.
Find
ing
5 The AfT portfolio contains over 90 bilateral, regional, multilateral and joint interventions with the smallest contributions amounting to just 160 000 Eur per annum.
Reco
mm
enda
tion
5 Adopt a more strategic approach to identifying and planning AfT interventions, and rationalise the number of projects and programmes.
Find
ing
6 Project and programme level targets tend to be weak. The indicators used are often not SMART (Specific; Measurable; Achievable; Relevant; and Time-bound) and are often limited to the input and activity level and not outcome and impact levels. Re
com
men
datio
n 6 Identify common high-
level results anticipated of AfT and develop clearly articulated high-level SMART indicators and targets at the goal/impact level.
Find
ing
7 MFA officials (advisors and embassy staff) do not always understand how their sector fits within the AfT agenda.
Reco
mm
enda
tion
7 Communicate and explain the AfT conceptual framework and encourage collaboration across sectors and implementing partners.
Find
ing
8 At present, internal guidance for designing, implementing and monitoring AfT is inadequate.
Reco
mm
enda
tion
8 Build advisory capacity and resources so that sectoral advisors can provide more support on AfT across the MFA and to embassies.
Find
ing
9 Guidance on how to achieve trade-related outcomes through sectoral interventions (without weakening sector specific achievements) is weak.
Reco
mm
enda
tion
9 Improve guidance for AfT by incorporating the new AfT conceptual framework into the new AfT Action Plan (or similar) as well as MFA’s new project/programmes planning system.
Find
ing
10Quality assurance processes are insufficient to ensure that trade-related outcomes are clearly articulated in (broad definition) AfT interventions or that poverty reduction, pro-poor growth or cross-cutting issues are sufficiently integrated.
Reco
mm
enda
tion
10
Improve quality assurance across sectors and aid modalities.
Find
ing
11 The mix of aid modalities, linkages and potential complementarities are not always considered and projects and programmes are often considered in isolation. Re
com
men
datio
n 11 Promote greater
synergies between interventions funded under different modalities, through improved information sharing, particularly between the multilateral and bilateral portfolios.
Find
ing
12 The coverage of the AfT portfolio across the different categories lags behind current global trends in AfT.
Reco
mm
enda
tion
12 Rebalance the Finnish AfT portfolio by increasing the proportion of funds allocated to current global priorities (e.g. regional economic integration and trade-related infrastructure).
Find
ing
13Little evidence of AfT programmes integrating an understanding of power (gender relations), with coverage of cross-cutting issues relatively low. For instance, on gender interventions tend to deal with gender at the level of numbers of women benefiting from an intervention.
Reco
mm
enda
tion
13
Integrate cross-cutting issues systematically throughout all AfT interventions by improving guidance, providing additional advisory resources.
Find
ing
14Lesson learning is ad hoc and embassy staff and implementing partners do not have access to systematic case studies or guidance on AfT.
Reco
mm
enda
tion
14
Enhance internal learning by maximising opportunities to identify and share lessons of good practice by communication between AfT-related interventions, developing and distributing short guidance notes on different aspects of AfT (e.g. at MFA in-weeks and through the intranet system).
Thank you for your attention!