Measuring Aid Quality, and where does NZ Stand?

Hosking's view of aid See link above.  pn179 

SEE ALSO THESE LINKS
Ardern defends NZ Aid
Hosking gets it wrong, as usual
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Ian Mitchell* and Caitlin McKee
* Deputy Director for CGD Europe and Senior Policy Fellow
November 15, 2018

Donors have lost their focus on aid effectiveness in the last decade, limiting aid’s impact. Here we report on new results of one of the few measures of aid “quality”—the Quality of Official Development Assistance (QuODA), which aims to bring aid effectiveness back into focus. Aid effectiveness still matters enormously to the world’s poor; donors should revisit effective aid principles and agree measures which take better account of today’s challenges and context.
Below we look at how we can currently measure aid effectiveness, how countries and multilateral donors rank, and where the agenda should go next. Across the measures, New Zealand, Denmark, and Australia rank highest. The results also highlight what many countries can and should improve on: eliminating tied aid and enhancing the use of recipient country systems and priorities. 
How can we measure aid effectiveness?

Etiquette, PSC Showcase, Tuisolia & Jalal, Tourism and Other Bits

CULTURAL ETIQUETTES. Pacific Islanders and Asians sometime comment on how unintentionally rude and abrasive Europeans can be, even in everyday conversations. I wonder whether this is what Kiribati President  Anote Tong had in mind when he praised the atmosphere and tone of last week’s Engaging Pacific Leaders meeting, saying this type of discussion needs to be restored at the Pacific Islands Forum.

PSC TO SHOWCASE ITS SERVICES. Government's "reaching out" efforts to make ministries and departments more accessible to the "man in the street" continue this week when staff from the five Divisions of the Public Service Commission are showcasing their services and programmes at the Government Information and Referral Centre, the former Fiji Visitors Bureau Office, in Downtown Suva. (CIRC photo.

AUSSIE WANTS MURDOCH OUT. Australian millionaire Dick Smith thinks the Australian Government should follow Fiji’s lead and “rack-off” Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited and its national newspaper The Australian  out of the country. He described the Murdoch-owned media as the "evil empire" and claimed The Australian constantly runs biased news.

CONFUSED TOURISM INFORMATION. A reader writes:"I'm confused. You report that tourism figures are booming? Why then is Air Pacific going broke, resorts are closing and no one is making money? Doesn't sound like a successful business plan to me? My son and his family just came back from a holiday in Fiji. I cannot believe how cheap it was. He almost got paid to go there? He demanded discounts on everything and got it."

Answer: There's good and bad news on tourism but Air Pacific is not going broke. It had a huge loss of $F60 million this year and is facing competition from larger airlines. One or two small resorts have closed because they could not meet debt obligations, and two large unfinished resorts never fully opened. The larger hotels and resorts are open but in competition with popular tourist destinations in Asia. Hence their basement prices. Samoa and Vanuatu have also benefited from Fiji's negative publicity.

But tourism numbers are up, and if they stay up and the world economy recovers, and if Fiji can fight off the negative publicity, the future should be brighter. That's a lot of 'ifs' but there would be one 'if' less if Australia and NZ really put their shoulders behind Fiji's economic and political recovery. That's another 'if.'

Note: Saras'sista is a a regular anti-government commentator on this blog. Irrespective of  near full flights by three international carriers, and the advent of Jetstar, he or she writes: "i don't accept any figures from this regime' as even they accept that there is no oversight by anyone, is this a bit like famine in north korea claiming to be a bountiful harvest??? No doubt there are tourists and no doubt they will still come, but the idea that we just accept whatever figures are plucked from the sky to reflect the actual position is highly amusing. This regime would not allow the reporting or anything else would it???

 

CARVING UP AUSSIE AID.  Click here.

UPDATE ON TUISOLIA & JALAL CHARGES. High Court Judge  Priyantha Fernando will make a ruling this Friday on whether the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions can expand on the two charges which remain against former Airports Fiji Ltd CEO Sakiasi Tuisolia and his wife Imrana Jalal. Last week the Court ordered a permanent stay on six of the eight charges while it allowed the DPP to pursue the case only on two charges where it is alleged that Tuisolia was operating a restaurant without a business license and Jalal is alleged to have given false information to a public officer.The trial date is set for August 27th-30th.


VANUATU OPPOSITION LEADER Maxime Carlot Korman says Prime Minister Edward Natapei was influenced by Australia when he made the call to defer the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) meeting, which Fiji had been due to host last week."Australia ... influence Natapei, also it was trying to divide, create a division, between our Melanesian leaders."

BIGGER COMPANIIES TO TAKE UNEMPLOYED. All companies that have more than 50 employees will have to take on a certain number of unemployed people as attachees from the National Employment Centre. Read more.

Saras'sista says the comments on this posting are fantastic, and I agree.  Click on "Comments" below to read them.  

Sunday Feature: An Insider's View from the Outside

Nesian is a pseudonym for a moderate, Fiji-born, part-Fijian, Hindi-speaking, sky-blue passport-carrying, former Fiji-resident. An `Insider's View From the Outside' is the resultof years spent hinking about all that has happened since the 2000 coup.

Aid Addiction

Fiji and its Pacific Island neighbours lie in the most aid-dependent territory in the world. This reliance ranges from about two percent of GDP in Fiji to 50 percent of GDP in the Marshall Islands. In a region with little to offer as export, the extra $US1 billion per annum is a welcome boost to the national treasuries.

These aren’t imaginary figures that have come out of my back pocket. They are from the Pacific Economic Survey 08 report, which in turn used data from organisations like the Asian Development Bank, International Monetary Fund and even the Uganda Communications Commission.

But Pacific nations have learned to rely on this aid to provide and maintain, among other things, costly public infrastructure and utility services. Which makes Pacific Islands easy pawns for countries seeking to further their national interest on the international stage.

Two of the most vigorous players in this arena are China and Taiwan. For years, these two adaptations of Sino nationhood, the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China, have battled for diplomatic recognition in the Pacific. At the moment Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu recognise PRC, Taiwan. Cook Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu acknowledge ROC, China.

In some of these islands, competition between China and Taiwan permeates so deeply that one of the two Chinas will support the party in government and the other will support the opposition. The end result of course is when there is a change in government, there is a corresponding shift in loyalty to the other China.

Japan is a controversial operator in the region. Whenever international pressure builds against its whaling program, its behind-the-scenes manoeuvring for support intensifies. Six out of 14 Pacific Island countries are currently members of the International Whaling Commission. They are Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. At various times in the past, Japan has been able to extract a sympathetic vote from these six in exchange for aid.

The latest to reposition itself as a friend of the Pacific, or rather to recognise that the region can be exploited, is Turkey. This is a country with no tangible links whatsoever with the Pacific. Yet here it is and for what purpose this diplomatic foray? I’ll give you a hint: Turkey is a candidate for one of the non-permanent seats allocated to the Western European and Others Group (WEOG) at the United Nations Security Council for 2009-2010. This is a seat it last held in 1961 and it is vigorously lobbying for support from other UN member states.

The Pacific’s addiction to international aid also makes the region easier to control. This is a fact not lost on the region’s traditional aid partners Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

It’s been used often enough against Fiji. Whenever the country takes a detour from democracy, down go its foreign aid allocations. Roads and public services fall into disrepair, discontent rises, political leaders realise that the democratic highway really is paved with gold and so begin the trek back.

But this is what globalisation has wrought and the Pacific needs to realise that it will always be at the mercy of the rest of the world.