The Awami League led government of Bangladesh is moving swiftly to institutionalize most of its governance and development plans in order to show that it can work transparently with its international aid donors.
As the Daily Star reports:
“The government has drafted 26 action plans including those for framing a new civil service act, dredging rivers and canals, and setting up IT centres in rural areas.”
“Apart from this, the government and development partners are working to devise a joint cooperation strategy (JCS) to ensure quick and effective use of foreign assistance.”
“The main objective of the JCS, which will be firmed up by June, is to offer a forum where the government and the donors can hold each other accountable in efforts to make concrete and tangible progress towards greater aid effectiveness.”
“The JCS will include a development result framework setting out key indicators and means to monitor progress in relation to national poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP).”
The measures and metrics of transparency, expenditure and growth are all supposed to be included in these action plans. Successful implementation of these action plans should make it more likely that the international donors can track their aid funds. And, then further if those plans are met, Bangladesh will have shown itself a ‘trustworthy’ target of increased foreign aid. There is, nevertheless, looming above this move the question of precommitment. How can Bangladesh commit (precommit) to showing funders that it will keep its promises?
The answer to this question will be determined when we can satisfactorily answer the following question: What is the cost that Bangladesh bears when it promises to demonstrate its use of aid funds? For if the costs borne can be determined then we will know when Bangladesh will have it in its interest to control its own rapacious behavior.
If we can determine a feasible answer to the question of Bangladesh’s precomitment strategy, then we will have obtained an answer to the following larger question: “Who watches the Watchmen?”
