Foreign Assistance

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined the Agency for International Development's (AID) economic assistance pipeline, focusing on the funds six AID missions obligated for development assistance and economic support but had not yet expended.

GAO found that: (1) 44 of the 103 sampled projects at the missions had excess funds totalling $296.2 million, with the percentage of excess funds at individual missions ranging from 5 to 21 percent; (2) excess funding in the pipeline could be higher than GAO estimated since funding calculations were based on mission estimates of planned spending; (3) 28 percent of other AID missions had over 3 years of funding in their pipelines, and about 9 percent of the funds in the pipelines was obligated in fiscal year 1984 or earlier; (4) $8 million at the 6 missions were obligated for projects that completed all funded activities by September 1989 or earlier; (5) unrealistic or overstated implementation plans were the primary reason that 22 of 44 projects had excess funds in the pipelines, totalling $823 million as of September 30, 1989; (6) circumstances that AID could not control, such as delays by host governments, contributed to excess funding; (7) some excess funds in the pipelines were caused primarily by problems in mission contracting and procurement; and (8) AID made limited use of its statutory authority to deobligate funds from slow or stalled projects, partly because host countries must agree to deobligation.

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.

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