Overview of the Network's current work evaluating the results of budget support

During the past decade some donor countries have changed the way they work, contributing parts of their development assistance directly to partner countries’ budgets. The aim of this type of support is to better align support with country policies and to reduce the burden of multiple, fragmented aid projects. Budget support, as this type of aid is known, also attempts to strengthen country financial and management systems by using them, and, ultimately, achieve better development results.

There is growing interest from various stakeholders in assessing the impacts of budget support and finding out whether or not budget support is indeed an effective way to support poverty reduction. The OECD DAC Evaluation Network has developed a pilot methodology to evaluate budget support, for assessing the chain of results and induced impacts of donor support at country level.

The methodology was tested in evaluations of budget support in Tunisia, Zambia (forthcoming) and Mali in 2010/2011. (See links below.) Now, the network is synthesizing the findings from these evaluations and revising the methodology. A short policy brief was developed to share the main findings from these evaluations. Further joint evaluation work is planned with Tanzania, Mozambique and others.

For more background on this work, read the budget support evaluation note for EVALNET, presented by the European Commission at the DAC EVALNET meeting in June 2011.

First joint evaluation of budget support

Members of the Evaluation Network finalised a major joint evaluation of general budget support in 2006. It was commissioned by a consortium of donor agencies and seven partner Governments under the auspices of the DAC Network on Development Evaluation. This evaluation examined to what extent, and under what circumstances, Partnership General Budget Support is relevant, efficient and effective for achieving sustainable impacts on poverty reduction and growth.This evaluation mainly addressed the process but did not focus on the chain of results of budget support.

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