Sat
18-Feb-2006

aid allocations through ngos

Amid all the NGO-bashing that goes on inside and outside the sector, you do need to remind yourself sometimes that the £220m of DFID's £4.1bn budget which goes through UK NGOs is probably better spent than much of the rest. An IMF working paper looks empirically at the aid allocation of European NGOs, concluding that NGOs seem "relatively immune to strategic interests and seem to keep up their promise of being advocates of the poor and vulnerable."

Given the relentless evidence of empirical analyses of aid patterns that bilateral donors distribute aid mainly to former colonies, countries with which they have economic ties, and to political allies, most notably now in the War on Terror, this is quite a refreshing study. The authors of the study tested NGO aid distribution for variables representing recipient country poverty levels and life expectancy, as well as for variables representing some potential strategic interest, and tried in particular to identify whether NGOs are influenced by their funding source. This reflects widespread concerns about the potential consequence of increased NGO funding by official donors. The results show that NGOs allocate aid "mostly according to the needs of their beneficiaries". Poverty consistently appears as the main worldwide determinant of NGO aid allocation, with institutional donor influence being very weak, and the commercial closeness between the recipient country and their region of origin of little relevance.