Rome agenda and commitments

Against this backdrop of events, the Rome High Level Forum was launched in 2003. Rome signalled a commitment – followed by a series of actions – to give continuity to the debate, building on previous discussions but also bringing together the major players to agree on concrete goals and plans. The Rome meeting was sponsored by the WB, the AfDB, the ADB, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the IMF, and the OECD/DAC, and was hosted by the Italian government. It was attended by 150 delegates from 28 developing countries in various regions, in addition to DAC members and representatives of UNDP and other UN agencies.

Although not explicitly stated at the time, one ventures the thought that the organisers of the HLF might have considered that its outcome, once endorsed, would somehow represent binding commitments to be honoured. As it turned out later, however, the question of “binding” was not on the cards then and was replaced by peer pressure and similar soft mechanisms. There was also a concern that insisting on a binding clause would discourage both aid providers and recipients to participate in what was still a new exercise. Forum participants were best described as a

“coalition of the willing”, which aptly characterised the nature and rationale behind their getting together in this and future forums.

The two-day meeting, on February 24–25, focussed on harmonisation issues. In preparation, regional workshops were held to review the state of harmonisation practices, listen to the views of recipient countries and make recommendations for consideration in Rome. An example of these meetings was the workshop organised by the ADB, the WB and the government of Japan, in cooperation with the government of Vietnam, and attended by representatives of seven developing countries from the region (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Republic of Japan, 2003).

2.2.1 The agenda

What did developing countries’ representatives have to say in Rome? The lead speaker, Tanzania’s then-president, Benjamin William Mkapa, called for greater coherence of trade and other global policies, as well as more ODA to help meet the gap between MDG targets and recipient countries’

limited resources.

Other interventions emphasised the need for simplification of development partners’ procedures; urged these partners to meet actual recipient countries’ needs; stressed the role of their countries’ ownership of the harmonisation agenda; and pleaded for assistance in building national capacity to cope with aid management as a high priority.

It was not standardisation as such, which was called for, but rather the harmonisation of procedures to reduce transaction costs, while respecting the diversity among recipients and providers. References were made to Vietnam’s and other countries’ experiences, which showed that the benefits of better harmonisation exceeded its costs.

Addressing the HLF, then-president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, stressed three points:

a) evidence had to be provided that ODA funds were being spent effectively;

b) assistance should be extended to strengthen recipient countries’

capacities for development, including the exercise of greater local ownership and participation; and

c) the international community had to do a better job of coordinating their actions.

In a clear admission of the lack of coordination, he said:

But when we came to take a look at our own behavior, and rather timorously at the behavior of many of our other partners, we discovered, at least that we, as an institution, were perhaps not as cooperative, not as minded to partnership, and not as good a listener as perhaps we might be, and so we decided that we would have a personality change, a culture change (World Bank, 2003d).

World Bank studies reported that a recipient country typically dealt with 30 aid providers, hosted overlapping and duplicate projects and received numerous missions taxing its capacity to manage the aid portfolio.

Meanwhile, “a vast consultancy industry has sprung up around aid delivery and is worth US$ 4 billion a year in Africa alone” (World Bank, 2003a).

A call was also made for more global policy coherence – an issue that would be repeatedly made at just about every international and regional meeting dealing with development issues. Coherence in trade was high on the agenda, especially since the prospects of a positive outcome for the Doha Round of negotiations, the so-called Development Round, still seemed promising. That was in 2003. Some economists, however, cautioned against pinning high hopes on exaggerated estimates of what a successful Doha Round would offer (Wise & Gallagher, 2006).

2.2.2 Key commitments

A Rome Declaration on Harmonisation was issued at the end of the meetings. It was the first in a series of commitments to be acted upon and monitored, with progress to be reported at the second HLF, set for Paris in March 2005. In the preamble to the Declaration, delegates stated that:

We in the donor community have been concerned with the growing evidence that, over time, the totality and wide variety of donor requirements and processes for preparing, delivering, and monitoring development assistance are generating unproductive transaction costs for, and drawing down the limited capacity of, partner countries. We are also aware of partner country concerns that donors’ practices do not always fit well with national development priorities and systems, including their budget, programme, and project planning cycles and public expenditure and financial management systems. We recognise that

these issues require urgent, coordinated, and sustained action to improve our effectiveness on the ground. (OECD, 2003)

This statement conveys a clear recognition of bottlenecks hampering aid effectiveness. Delegates also endorsed the good harmonisation principles proposed by the OECD/DAC Task Force on Donor Practices. Aid providers and recipient countries committed themselves to the following actions to enhance harmonisation.

Box 1: Rome commitments

 Ensure that development assistance is delivered in accordance with partner-country priorities.

 Review and amend individual institutions’ and countries’ policies, procedures, and practices to facilitate harmonisation.

 Reduce donor missions, reviews, and reporting, streamline conditionalities, and simplify and harmonise documentation.

 Implement progressively the good-practice standards or principles in development assistance delivery and management.

 Intensify donor efforts to work through delegated cooperation at the country level and increase the flexibility of country-based staff.

 Develop, at all organisational levels, incentives that foster manage-ment and staff recognition of the benefits of harmonisation.

 Provide support for country analytic work in ways that will strengthen governments’ ability to assume a greater leadership role and take ownership of development results.

 Expand or mainstream country-led efforts to streamline donor procedures and practices, including enhancing demand-driven technical cooperation.

 Provide budget, sector, or balance of payments support where it is consistent with the mandate of the donor, and when appropriate policy and fiduciary arrangements are in place.

 Promote harmonised approaches in global and regional programmes.

Source: OECD (2003)

These commitments are clearly stated and comprehensive in addressing what had become a persistent set of challenges. They called for aid providers and recipient countries to put together action plans that could be monitored. In looking forward, “stocktaking meetings” were to be held in early 2005 following the review already scheduled to take place at the OECD/DAC in 2004. The French government announced in Rome its willingness to host another such event in Paris in 2005.