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Development assistance in many aid recipient countries constitutes an important source of revenue and resources. In order to make best use of development assistance, partner authorities need to be in a position to plan for the medium and long term and to optimise allocation of resources within and across sectors. In this connection, the Paris Declaration calls on donors to provide reliable indicative commitments of aid over a multi-year framework and disburse aid in a timely and predictable fashion according to agreed schedules (PD-§26). While improvements in aid predictability are needed over the short, medium and long-term, this indicator focuses specifically on in-year predictability of aid flows to the government sector. In doing so, it recognises that shortfalls in the total amount of aid to the government sector and delays in the in-year disbursements of scheduled funds can have serious implications for a government’s ability to implement its national development strategy as planned.
This indicator measures the gap between aid scheduled and aid effectively disbursed and recorded in countries’ accounting systems. The objective of the Paris Declaration is to gradually close this predictability gap so that aid is increasingly: disbursed according to agreed schedules, and comprehensively recorded in countries’ accounting systems. Meeting this objective is not exclusively within donors’ control: it is a shared responsibility that requires donors and government to work together on various fronts at the same time. Actions include efforts in improving:
- The realism of predictions on volume and timing of expected disbursements. This includes realism on the pace of programme implementation.
- The mechanisms for notifying and recording donor-funded disbursements.
- The comprehensiveness of government’s records of disbursements made by donors.
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