Foreign Aid and Corruption

I have posted a few times (here and here and here) on the effectiveness of foreign aid in general and in Nepal. Most recently I wrote about it in the Op-Ed forThe Kathmandu Post (CLICK HERE). Most of these posts relate to the systemic issues with foreign aid, however, I do think that corruption adds to the ineffectiveness of foreign aid. This news article (CLICK HERE) published on MyRepublica points out  that "a report of Ministry of Finance says that the level of corruption in the country has increased over the last 10 years and it has gone on to hurt the development results badly. Rise in corruption has mainly led to reduced cost effectiveness and efficiency of the development programs, states the Nepal Country Evaluation Report of the Paris Declaration that the national evaluation team submitted to the government recently."

Reducing Poverty-- One Catwalk at a Time!

In my recent Op-Ed for The Kathmandu Post (CLICK HERE) I did mention the lavish office spaces aid agencies occupy in developing countries' capitals. However, I was not aware of these kinds of activities that were also 'eating up' the funds allocated for poverty alleviation and other socio-economic programs. I came across this news at DEVEX (CLICK HERE), which refers to this (CLICK HERE) blog post by Alex Singleton for The Telegraph. Your tax Dollars (Euros) at work!
 
Source: (CLICK HERE)

Sad Reality...

I was going through my daily reading of the Nepali newspapers when I ran across this Op-Ed (CLICK HERE) by Mr. Bihari Krishna Shrestha, an anthropologist and a previous member of the National Planning Commission-Nepal, published on The Kathmandu Post. It is an interesting and candid account of reality--economic, social, and political. If you enjoyed reading my Op-Ed (CLICK HERE) that I posted last week, you will enjoy this one! Here is an excerpt from the article.

"The many Andolans in Nepal have been useful only in restoring them to power. The Constituent Assembly itself has been the latest manna from heaven. Since its enormous horde of 601 members makes more than half a million rupees a year each in hard cash, the incentive is heavily stacked against writing the Constitution. The longer the delay, the larger the monetary intake both for the members and their parties. While democracy and development are mutually reinforcing and indispensable for the people, Nepal’s traditional socio-economic context demands a different methodology to them."

Yes They Can, The Kathmandu Post (CLICK HERE) for the full article.

Failure of Foreign Aid

This article (Click Here) on Nepalnews points out that the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development concluded that there needs to be a mandatory "structural change in the international assistance and aid designed for the economic growth of LDCs." Duh!