Foreign Aid

Improving the Impact and Control of Economic Support Funds Gao ID: NSIAD-88-182 June 29, 1988

In response to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Agency for International Development's (AID) efforts to: (1) promote economic policy reform through the Economic Support Fund (ESF) program; and (2) control ESF cash transfer funds.

GAO found that AID: (1) relied on cash transfers to encourage economic policy reforms and to address balance-of-payments problems; (2) did not establish sufficient criteria to guide its policy reform efforts; (3) has had mixed success in encouraging policy reforms; (4) encountered problems in its efforts to implement separate accounting for cash transfers, since recipients continued commingling program funds with foreign exchange accounts; (5) failed to require separate accounting for certain ESF grants and projects because it did not consider them cash transfers; and (6) did not verify that recipients complied with its requirement to keep records on separate account disbursement or ensure that they used the funds for authorized purposes.

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: Team: Phone:


The Justia Government Accountability Office site republishes public reports retrieved from the U.S. GAO These reports should not be considered official, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Justia.