Tackling rural poverty, together

Extract

This background report entitled “Aid Architecture: An Overview of the Main Trends in Official Development Assistance Flows” was prepared by the International Development Association (IDA) for the April 15, 2007, Development Committee Meeting of IMF and World Bank.

ODA has grown steadily over the last decade, and is expected to continue to rise as donors have committed to significantly scale-up aid to achieve the MDGs. To make effective use of such scaled-up ODA at the country level, a number of implementation challenges would need to be addressed by donor and recipients. The most upfront challenges include:

• Achieving complementarity across national, regional and global development priorities and programs; and
• Strengthening recipient countries’ ability to make effective use of potentially scaled-up fast-disbursing ODA, such as budget support.

A platform for achieving complementarity across national, regional and global development priorities and programs can be found in the principles and targets of the Paris Declaration. In addition, country-level effectiveness of a potential scaling-up in programmatic ODA – added to the increased fiscal space brought about by recent debt relief initiatives – can be enhanced if country systems are strengthened.