Download Free Department For International Development Annual Report And Accounts 2013 14 Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Department For International Development Annual Report And Accounts 2013 14 and write the review.

About two-thirds of DFID's expenditure in 2011-12, including nearly 40% of its bilateral spending, went through multilateral organisations even though they have higher administrative costs. This represents a major change in recent years and has been accompanied by a decline in direct aid to recipient Governments. DFID argues that the change is not a reflection of its need to spend money quickly, but a result of the reduced need for budget support in countries with rising tax bases and improved financial management, as well as its focus on fragile states. The DFID needs to ensure that it has thoroughly examined other options such as greater use of local NGOs and sector budget support. DFID has switched expenditure from low income to middle income countries, in part because several countries with a large number of poor people have recently graduated to middle-income status. Policy towards middle income countries varies and DFID needs establish and make public the criteria it will use to inform decisions of when and how it should cease to provide aid. DFID should also consider establishing a Development Bank - that could offer concessional loans alongside grant aid and would free from the constraint of having to ensure that cash was spent by the end of the financial year. Staffing also may still not be sufficient to oversee the huge expenditure of UK taxpayers' money undertaken by multilaterals. MPs remain concerned that DFID's has ended its bilateral programme in one of the world's poorest countries, Burundi, and is urging the new Secretary of State to re-instate it.
While DFID's total budget is increasing, the Department will both restrict operating costs to 2% by 2014-15 and reduce its administrative costs by a third in real terms, from £128 million in 2010-11 to £94 million by 2014-15. This report warns that capping operational costs and staff numbers may not reduce overall costs or improve effective delivery of development assistance. The International Development Committee also raises concerns that cost pressures are driving DFID to use consultants to deliver its programmes, rather than in-house expertise. The Department spends £450 million on technical cooperation per year. Much of this is good work, yet it was unclear exactly what this money was spent on, or how effective it was and the extent to which external providers were used. DFID needs to improve its assessment of which projects and services it should use consultants for; and assess more carefully the use of consultants to manage the Department's own delivery programmes. In its efforts to reduce administrative spending DFID might be 'exporting' these costs to other organisations, including NGOs and multilateral aid organisations, with higher real administration costs. The Department should assess the best and most effective way to deliver development assistance as it may be able to do it more cheaply and effectively than external organisations. The report recommends that the Department improves its tracking of and reporting on the total cost of administering its aid programme with the aim of quantifying how much aid actually ends up reaching recipients.
In the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review the Coalition Government announced its decision to achieve the internationally agreed target of providing 0.7 percent of Gross National Income as ODA from 2013. This will involve spending an additional 2.5 billion pounds in 2013-14 to make the total DFID budget 11.3 billion pounds in that year. There will be a large increase in spending on fragile and conflict affected states and it will be difficult to ensure that every pound is well spent in such war-torn environments. When scrutinising DFID's accounts the MPs were also surprised to discover that the Pope's visit was paid for in part by money supposed to be for overseas development aid (ODA). The Committee expects a response from the Government as to what the £1.85 million, transferred to the Foreign Office for the papal visit, was spent on and an explanation as to how this was ODA compliant. The Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) announced reductions in DFID's running costs to 2% of the total budget. If achieved, this would make DFID the most cost-efficient development organisation in the world.This is to be achieved by a large reduction in back office administration costs (which excludes front-line staff) of £34 million over the CSR period. The International Development Committee supports the proposals to make savings in back office staff, but the MPs are warning that Ministers must ensure that reduced administration budgets do not affect the ability to deliver aid programmes on the ground. While declining as a share of total costs, running costs will increase in real terms over the next four years because the total budget will rise so much.
Government response to HC 693, 2013-14 (ISBN 9780215071750). DFID's annual report for 2012-13 published as HC 12, session 2013-14 (ISBN 9780102983241)
This report is the International Development Committee's annual review of UK aid programmes and the administration of the Department for International Development (DFID). The Committee finds that field work overseas should be given greater priority and Ministers must explain UK spending on humanitarian projects more clearly. DFID should not provide funds to support disasters in middle income countries by raiding bilateral development programmes in low income countries. Other wealthy OECD countries must play their part in providing humanitarian assistance. DFID should set out annually its provisional budget for humanitarian relief, what is held as contingencies for unpredictable events and how it will be deployed if not called upon. There has also been a decline in DFID's spending on budget support, the consequences of which should be assessed. £1,075 million of DFID's bilateral expenditure is spent through multilaterals and private contractors. DFID has put in place a number of changes to improve the value for money provided by spending through and should report on their effectiveness. The Committee is also worried that the Department actually spends 40% of its budget in the last two months of the year, which raises questions about the smooth running of management and planning processes. DFID staff should have longer postings overseas (normally a minimum of four years) so that they can develop a deeper understanding of the culture and politics of the country they are working in and engage more effectively with the country's politicians.
The Independent Commission on Aid Impact (ICAI) was established in May 2011 with a strategic aim to provide independent scrutiny of UK aid spending, to promote the delivery of value for money for British taxpayers and the maximisation of the impact of aid. ICAI reports directly to Parliament through the International Development Committee, which established a sub-Committee on the work of ICAI in October 2012. This has worked well, and has helped foster closer working arrangements that promote the sharing of ideas between IDC inquires and the evaluations that ICAI undertakes. ICAI's Annual Report 2012-13 was generally well-received, as was the Commission's overall performance over the past year. The Annual Report published ICAI's budget for the first time and another excellent innovation was a section following up recommendations made in ICAI's Year 1 reports. ICAI should include a more detailed assessment of the impact of UK aid, including overarching lessons for DFID and should do more to promote lesson-learning across evaluations. This could be done by seminars and outreach events following each evaluation, which would help improve knowledge dissemination, both to DFID and the wider development community. A clear message this year was that DFID must think more strategically about its management of large contracts, especially those with multilateral agencies, nongovernmental organisations and contractors. This seems a fundamental criticism of the Department given the significance of these relationships. DFID should pay closer attention to how it selects external agencies as implementing bodies, and how much it pays for their services.
The number of low income countries is falling. At the same time, the importance of global issues - conflict, climate, migration, trade, tax, financial stability, youth unemployment, urbanisation economic development, and infectious disease - is rising. The Committee argues that aid remains vital for addressing poverty in poor countries, for encouraging economic development, for providing global goods such as tackling climate change, combating diseases such as Ebola and providing humanitarian assistance, but new forms of co-operation have to be developed in order to meet these challenges. This will include new financial mechanisms and facilitating links with UK institutions in a wide range of areas, including health, education, culture, law, culture and science. This will require the Department for International Development (DFID) to put more emphasis on working with small organisations and less on programme management.As the focus moves away from aid, policy coherence for development must be at the heart of a new approach. This means working across Government in the UK, and with global partners in the multilateral system, to maximise the impact on development of all the UK's actions. This approach and changes will require DFID staff to develop different skills.
The UK's aid programme, much of which is delivered from Scotland, is genuinely transformational. The UK provided £8.7 billion of aid in 2012/13, but it is the quality of this aid - not just its quantity - which sets the UK apart. As part of the UK, Scotland makes a tremendous contribution to all this. If Scotland were to become an independent country, its development agency would inevitably be a much smaller player. From 2013 onwards, the UK Government plans to spend 0.7% of Gross National Income on Official Development Assistance. If Scotland were to become independent, the UK's overall GNI - and the amount of money it spends on ODA - would fall. "Scotland has 8.3% of the UK's population share, so we estimate that the UK's ODA would fall by around 8.3%, or £1 billion. DFID's work - either its bilateral programmes or its funding to multilateral organisations - would inevitably then be subject to cuts. MPs are also concerned that during any transitional period, the restructuring of DFID and the setup of an independent Scottish development agency would divert management attention towards restructuring and away from frontline delivery by both agencies. In addition, a significant proportion of DFID's workforce is based at its Scottish office in East Kilbride, including a number of senior staff. By contrast, the number of jobs available with an independent Scottish development agency is likely to be relatively few (or the new Scottish development agency would be heavily overstaffed). The impact on jobs would therefore be substantial.
Evaluation is widely recognised as an important component for learning and improving development effectiveness. Evaluation responds to public and taxpayer demands for credible information and independent assessment of development co-operation activities.
The 2013/2014 Education for All Global Monitoring Report shows that a lack of attention to education quality and a failure to reach the marginalized have contributed to a learning crisis that needs urgent attention. Worldwide, 250 million children many of them from disadvantaged backgrounds are not learning the basics. Teaching and Learning: Achieving Quality for All describes how policy-makers can support and sustain a quality education system for all children, regardless of background, by providing the best teachers. The Report also documents global progress in achieving Education for All goals and provides lessons for setting a new education agenda post-2015. In addition, the Report identifies that insufficient financing is hindering advances in education.