AID Recognizes Need To Improve the Foreign Economic Assistance Planning and Programming Process

Gao ID: NSIAD-85-110 August 28, 1985

GAO reviewed the Agency for International Development's (AID) foreign economic assistance planning and programming process to determine whether opportunities exist for AID to streamline and improve the process.

GAO found that: (1) an AID task force recommended that AID devote more time to policy, strategy, and program supervision and less time to project design and review; and (2) AID will not implement the recommendation until it completes an experiment designed to test new procedures. Most AID missions submit an annual country development strategy statement, and AID uses this statement to evaluate mission budgets and project proposals. AID regulations require missions to obtain strategy approval before submitting annual budgets. GAO found that: (1) less than half of the full strategy statements it reviewed resulted in approval before the deadline for annual budget submissions; (2) a number of missions have operated indefinitely without approved strategies; (3) AID has limited flexibility to adjust mission budget proposals, which makes missions reluctant to reject or modify project proposals or submit alternative proposals; and (4) AID usually addresses programming decisions in the project review cycle, rather than in its budget process. In addition, GAO found that: (1) AID headquarters project reviews rarely raise new issues and frequently contain details more appropriately addressed by project identification documents; and (2) some AID missions do not have sufficient staff resources or technical expertise to review and approve project identification documents.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Joseph E. Kelley Team: General Accounting Office: National Security and International Affairs Division Phone: (202) 512-4128


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