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Содержание Annex 4 SWAP experience Existing experience of SWAP application Example of Mozambique Example of Zambia Example of Uganda Example of Cambodia Key milestones of SWAp process Off-budget support to the Ministry Indirect support through NGOs Lessons learnt and factors contributed to achievements

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Annex 4 SWAP experience

Existing experience of SWAP application

SWAPs were developed to address a range of specific problems – including poor co-ordination (and hence duplication, gaps and lack of synergy) of sector expenditure, lack of effective management of all sectoral activities by government and donors, and lack of integration with broad public sector reform measures – which together compromised the impact of development expenditure. In effect, SWAPs embodied a diagnosis of the core problems facing governments in increasing the relevance, efficiency and effectiveness of development programmes.


1. SWAPs and their key implications

The basis of the SWAP is an assessment of the ways in which the effectiveness of public interventions, whether funded through government sources or by donors, can be enhanced. This, in turn, requires a coherent analysis of the different roles and responsibilities of the public and private sectors. The role of the public sector in agricultural development remains a controversial subject,¹⁴ but many believe that this should focus on regulatory and policy functions, rather than the direct provision of services. The private sector, then, plays the principal direct role in agricultural development, and it is the core task of the public sector to support this role


SWAPs offer potential means to impact the poverty reduction by institutionalising an effective and sustainable cycle of policy formulation and implementation, and using national systems, thereby reducing transaction costs, and increasing transparency and accountability.


2. Success of SWAPs to date

To date, however, SWAPs have had mixed success in the natural resources sector, largely as a result of problems with the dominant means by which sector-wide approaches have been implemented – the sector investment programme. But increasing awareness and capacity building has led to a more coherent view, in which SWAPs are seen as a long-term process, with objectives including stronger management and policy capacity within government, a more coherent, broadly owned sector policy framework, and greater attention to financial sustainability.


SWAPs emphasise the principles of being participatory, cross-sectoral, dynamic and sustainable, providing: the vision and strategies for poverty reduction; the quality of public expenditure management and of institutions; learning and monitoring processes.


Under a sector-wide approach, donors in effect adopt the type of medium-term partnership and commitment that sits uneasily with conventional carrot-and-stick conditionality. Likewise, such SWAP-based partnerships are incompatible with traditional project-based approaches that aim to avoid shortcomings in national capacities by developing parallel processes.


Public sector capacity building has been a focus of aid efforts for decades. Increasingly donor attention has focused on strengthening key government-wide and sectoral capacities that play a major role in determining the overall effectiveness of government action. Particular attention is now being paid to the national budget and public expenditure management process, and to strengthening the capacity of decentralised government.


A Sector Investment Programme (SIP) is best understood as one possible mean of achieving the objectives of a SWAP. The application of this model has in practice been beset by problems, resulting from lack of government ownership, the complexity of the process involved (which has been poorly linked to existing government processes) and the over-ambitious and donor-driven timetable.

To be effective, SWAPs always have to link to a supportive macro-economic framework; and often to decentralised local government¹⁵ (Goldman, 2000).


Improved public expenditure management (PEM) – often but not always with a medium-term expenditure framework (MTEF) at its centre – should define the available resources, the broad objectives, and the anticipated costs of achieving outcomes, and defines the criteria (including indicators) by which impact and effectiveness will be judged. The key point is that the PEM framework provides a tight discipline for ministries, obliging them to show how they will use funds from the government and donors to achieve agreed national policy goals.

Example of Mozambique

Strengthening PEM, based on an MTEF, in Mozambique was designed to help the Ministry of Agriculture to strengthen the SWAP process in agriculture – PROAGRI.


The government of Mozambique (GoM) developed the MTEF to strengthen its budgeting processes. Initially, the MTEF was designed simply to provide more reliable projections of macroeconomic and fiscal variables. Subsequently, the MTEF became more ambitious and comprehensive, providing more accurate overviews of the total resources – both on- and off-budget – which were available to sectors, as well as introducing the concept of efficiency and effectiveness analysis of sector spending (that is, analysis of outputs and outcomes).


The MTEF was thought to be vital to the effective implementation of the agricultural sector programme – PROAGRI. If PROAGRI is to be a success to which donors are prepared to remain committed, the Ministry of Agriculture (MPF) must be able to secure from the Ministry of Finance adequate and predictable (counterpart) funds. To do this, it must provide information outlining the ways in which PROAGRI is consistent with government policy, and how government objectives are met through spending on the programme. By tying itself in to the MTEF, the MPF hopes to be able to develop the types of controlled, outcome-oriented budgeting which the ministry of finance increasingly demands before it will countenance sector expenditure.


In practice, however, recent work on the PROAGRI suggests that these optimistic objectives may have fallen foul of capacity problems.¹⁶ In particular, the rapid development and implementation of common pool funding arrangements, which has been a feature of PROAGRI, may be inappropriate given the underlying weaknesses of Mozambique’s public expenditure management system. Core problems include a lack of realistic and credible macroeconomic and fiscal projections, an annual budget that lacks integrity and credibility as a means of operationalising expenditure programmes, and a lack of reliable information relating to expenditure and performance.


2. Using SWAPs to enhance the sustainability of rural livelihoods

Sector-wide approaches are processes designed to strengthen government planning and implementation. To the extent that this role is well defined, and is supportive of poverty reduction (as might be expected to be the case if it they have been developed using SLAs), SWAPs will facilitate support for the livelihoods of the rural poor.


Donors have now widely adopted sectoral approaches in their support for rural development¹⁷. They typically view this involvement as a long-term process, which will require them to develop new approaches, skills and strategies, rather than as an opportunity to revert to past, often ineffective project-based approaches.


But SWAPs are not a panacea, and in many cases, it will not always be appropriate to undertake a SWAP. Addressing this issue, Foster¹⁸ has developed a framework to identify which types of aid instrument apply in which cases. Using this framework, Foster shows that SWAPs are generally most applicable in economies with a strong macro framework and where there are sound sector policies and strong sector management capacity. Where such conditions do not exist, the most appropriate instruments are generally those which help the recipient government to progress towards a situation where SWAP implementation is possible. This might include, for example, project support to demonstrate opportunities for effective sector policy change (such as in the area of plurality of agricultural services) or instruments which assist in the strengthening of public expenditure management (such as MTEFs).


Those difficulties which have been encountered in the implementation of SWAPs reflect the lack of discrimination and pragmatism that has been shown in developing the approaches, particularly sector investment programmes (SIPs), which are one type of sector-wide approach which has received considerable attention as a result of the number of World Bank and other-donor supported SIPs which are being undertaken.

Example of Zambia

In Zambia the ASIP has formed a basis for disbursement of donor funds in support of the agricultural sector, but this has failed.


The Ghana Agricultural Services Sub-sector Investment Programme (AgSSIP) began life in 1997. Successful experiences with sector programmes in the health and education sectors encouraged optimism, and the original timetable predicted completion of planning by end-1998. This was over-optimistic, and completion of programme planning by end-2000 is far from certain. AgSSIP draws attention to at least five generic problems that can occur with ASIPs:

lack of government ownership – throughout the AgSSIP process, government has allowed itself to be pushed by donors to adopt inappropriate deadlines, consultancy teams and terms of reference. This has led to a sense of frustration in government, as well as a clear lack of feedback from government into the process. Donors have attempted to use the planning process as an opportunity to push for policy reform in areas such as the privatisation of extension, further alienating government staff. Lack of involvement of government staff has also prevented the AgSSIP from learning lessons from past project experiences in Ghana.

lack of integration with government budget processes – AgSSIP has also marginalised staff from the ministry of finance. At the same time as the AgSSIP was being developed, the government was developing its medium-term expenditure framework. Yet these two processes were never reconciled. The result has been that ministry of agriculture staff have in effect developed two separate budgets – for the MTEF and for


the AgSSIP, and the relationship between the two is not clear. In many ways, the AgSSIP has undermined the government’s attempts to take control of its national resource allocation process.

parallel and complex administrative approaches – the AgSSIP has been characterised by high cost, parallel processes. A series of task forces, headed by ministry staff, was created to develop proposals for the AgSSIP. These task forces operated outside the standard planning processes of the ministry, and were funded independently. In fact (and partly as a result) the output from these task forces was weak, and was often re-written by foreign consultants. In some cases this has led to the development of an unusual focus, such as in the case of the so-called farmer-based organisations, which number less than 50 in Ghana but which have become one of the key focal points of the AgSSIP.

lack of poverty focus – the basis of the AgSSIP was the Ghana Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Development Strategy. This was developed in 1997 to show how Ghana would raise agricultural growth, not as a means of addressing poverty. Donors drew attention to this in late 1997, and secured a commitment from the drafters of AgSSIP that poverty issues would be taken into account. But the AAGDS was not revised, and the AgSSIP has never managed to reorient itself to support rural poverty reduction. The World Bank notes in the latest Programme Appraisal Document (April 2000) that the AgSSIP is not poverty focussed.

lack of coherent sector strategy – the AAGDS was developed as a means of accelerating agricultural growth. As a sector development strategy it is a weak document. In addition to paying inadequate attention to poverty reduction, the document fails to address linkages between agricultural and rural development, and so presents an incomplete picture of opportunities and priorities in the sector. Similarly, whilst it notes that growth in the sector must be driven by the private sector, it is unclear how government can support this.

1. Core issues of SWAP
   

SWAPs draw attention to three core issues:

• the existence or absence of a coherent political will that places poverty reduction at the heart of government and donor objectives;
  
• the need for high levels of management and implementation capacity within government such that agreed programmes can effectively be implemented; and
  
• a sound understanding of the nature, causes and dynamics of poverty which can inform policy formulation and implementation.
  

Example of Uganda

An example of good practice in sector-wide approaches is that of the agriculture – and broader natural resources – sector in Uganda. The core characteristics that appear to differentiate the Uganda experience from those of other countries on the continent include:

• a coherent, broadly owned anti-poverty strategy reflected in the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP). The PEAP was developed in a genuine, participatory manner, with strong input from civil society as well as from the government;
  
• effective poverty monitoring systems developed with a strong civil society input;
  
• sound public expenditure management, consolidated through the medium-term expenditure framework;
  
• leadership from the ministry of finance, reflected in a strong contribution to the Programme for the Modernisation of Agriculture (PMA);
  
• a coherent vision for the sector, which includes infrastructure ministries as well as the full range of natural resources ministries;
  
• a willingness to undertake institutional reforms, including the transfer of responsibilities for agricultural extension to local governments.
  

The key achievements to date of the Uganda process include:

• the development of a coherent framework for the agricultural budget;
  
• implementation of decentralisation and far-reaching reform of the ministry of agriculture; and
  
• development of a coherent, poverty-based strategy.
  

Despite these achievements, however, the process has still to succeed in demonstrating an effective means of delivering relevant, efficient and effective services to the rural poor in Uganda.


The case of Uganda usefully demonstrates the long-term nature of the SWAP process, and the areas where further attention is still needed. In particular (referring again to the three core issues addressed by a SWAP), it is clear that the question of organisational capacity needs additional support. Progress has been made through the decentralisation of some core services, and through the reduction in size of the central ministry of agriculture, but substantial additional work is needed to ensure that sustainable capacity is developed and that effective service delivery – if this is what is deemed achievable by the GoU – can be developed.

Example of Cambodia

The Sector-Wide Approach program in the education sector aims to ensure that external funding to the sector supports a single sector policy and expenditure program, under government leadership and adopting common approaches to planning and implementation. The concept of SWAp was introduced to the education sector in the context of the national reforms initiated by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MOEYS) around 1999. MOEYS, in collaboration with its partners, has so far formulated a sector strategy and conducted joint sector reviews under the SWAP.


The Education Investment Plan 1995-2000, developed with the financial support of ADB, was an early attempt to coordinate donor assistance to the education sector. However, the plan achieved only a limited success, as described in the government’s own assessment in 2000²⁹. This report acknowledged the sector’s disappointing performance despite substantial donor assistance over the past decade, and addressed the need for more sustainable and policy-led reform. The limited impact of aid to education during the 1990s was also attributed to the proliferation of discreet and unconnected donor projects, which aggravated policy fragmentation.

With the recognition of the need for a different approach to address those problems, the Sector-Wide Approach was envisaged in the education sector. The government’s new paradigm that advocated a shift from "donorship to government-led ownership and partnership" presented at the CG meeting in 2000 also drove the MOEYS and its partners towards the SWAP process in the education sector. An additional factor that drove them to take a practical step towards SWAP was an alliance of like-minded donor agencies, and substantial technical backup by an ADB TA team.

Key milestones of the SWAP process in Cambodia to date are highlighted in the table below. The SWAP process can be divided into three stages: commitment to partnership, sector policy and strategy formulation, and joint sector review.

Key milestones of SWAp process

Mid-1999	Discussion of SWAp in the context of education sector reform	Stage 1: Commitment to partnership
March 2000	Statement of Intent for a new form of government/donor/NGO partnership signed (by some donors and NGOs).
Mid/late 2000	MOEYS hosts government, donor and NGO seminars on international experience in sector wide approach to education reform
February 2001	Formal agreement on education partnership principles by MOEYS/Donor/NGO Consultative Group, alongside revitalization of donor Education Sector Working Group
March-April 2001	Education Strategic Plan (ESP) 2001-05 developed by MOEYS and approved by Government/Donor/NGO Consultative Group	Stage 2: Sector policy and strategy formulation
June 2001	Joint review and appraisal of ESP 2001-05 and Education Sector Support Program (ESSP) 2001-2005
September 2002	2002 ESSP Joint Review – revised ESSP (2002-2006), the Donor Report, poverty impact, sector performance prepared as part of the ESSP Review	Stage 3: Joint sector reviews
Late 2002	Formulation of preliminary PRSP and Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), drawing on the policy and strategic directions set out in the revised ESSP 2002-06
May 2003	2003 ESSP Joint Review – revised ESSP (2003-2007), the Donor Report, sector performance (the whole sector as well as provincial sector performance) and departmental achievement reports prepared; a special meeting of the Education Finance Management Committee (EFMC) convened to address critical financial issues

The institutions that played important roles in the process of Education SWAP include a mixture of (1) joint working frameworks; (2) aid coordination tools; and (3) intra-donor coordination.


Donor financing modalities in Cambodia were implemented through:

• Direct Project Support: This refers to traditional project support where the assistance is accounted for in the development budget of the MOEYS and included in the PIP. Usually this type of support has separate donor defined disbursement, accounting, auditing and reporting procedures and is often associated with a discrete project implementation unit. Commonly the MOEYS needs to maintain two accounting reporting systems to satisfy both government and donor requirements.
  
• Direct Budget Support: This refers to direct payments from the agency to the Treasury usually on the basis of a letter or statement of policy outlining the activities and outcomes which determine the release of annual or semi-annual trenches. Funds pass through the recurrent budget of the Government, though not specifically through the MOEYS. Disbursement, accounting, auditing and reporting is normally done through the government system of financial management.
  
• Off-budget support to the Ministry: Donor agencies may provide funds and resources direct to a Ministry through a separate bank account system, often co-signed by a MOEYS official and a donor representative. Such accounts may not be included in either recurrent or development budgets, and are usually accounted for only by the donor.
  

• Indirect support through NGOs: This refers to support to the sector which is provided via other organizations such as non-government organizations. Funds are paid to those agencies and accounted for by those agencies directly to the donor. The Ministry may not be aware of the existence or extent of this support and it may be provided low down in the system e.g. directly to individual schools or institutions in the sector. It is usually not included in the budget of the Government.
  

• Agency direct support: This refers to funds held by the donor agency and expended by it directly. This is a common modality for scholarships (either in country or abroad), small or specific consultancies (such as lending program identification) or small and discrete supply of assistance such as equipment. These funds do not appear in the government budget and are accounted for only by the donor agency. The MOEYS will often be unaware of the level of financing.¹⁹
  

Lessons learnt and factors contributed to achievements:

• A flexible approach towards the terms and process of establishing partnership encourages broader and more active participation.
  
• Wide dissemination of program concepts among stakeholders should take place before actual partnership negotiations start.
  
• A fair and unbiased process is crucial for encouraging donor participation and frank discussion.
  
• Achieving consensus among donors prior to consultation with the government results in more coherent recommendations and reduced transaction costs to the government
  
• An effective coordinator can make the process work more smoothly
  

Challenges:

• Developing a more consistent information system
  
• Better coordination of technical assistance for capacity development of MOEYS officials
  
• Strengthening the financial management system, in particular related to reform measures
  

4. Recommendations for international donors for SWAP

• The types of activity that could be expected to support strengthened political commitment include (i) engaging in policy dialogue, and (ii) strengthening institutions which can challenge government and civil society organisations. Experience suggests that conditionality has little role to play in encouraging political support, except insofar as external support for a position is seen to add credibility. Awareness on the part of donors of the fragility of political will must be strengthened so that realistic assessments of long-term commitment can be determined. The example of the broad-based support for poverty reduction in Uganda is currently a good-practice example in this area.
  
• Donors need to be realistic about the organisational capacity and resources available to governments, and the likely impact on such capacity of initiatives such as decentralisation. The failure of ASIPs is in no small part traceable to a systematic overestimation of the capacity of governments, and similar miscalculations would undermine alternative means of implementing SWAPs. It must be clear how governments are sustainably to develop and retain the capacity to undertake the analysis and consultation.
  
• When SWAPs are (correctly) viewed as long-term processes, which involve gradual movement along a continuum where (i) broad public sector expenditure management capacity, and (ii) consensus on key policy issues are gradually built to such a level that budget support can confidently be provided, the option to return to a system of project-based support must be ruled out. This means that proposed new projects and programmes – including livelihoods programmes – must be considered within a framework which explicitly considers the status of those core factors which influence aid effectiveness. Where it is not clear how proposals will be sustainable in the face of these core issues, donors cannot reasonably support them.