Government bad, non-government good.
Because Poloniex only uses cryptocurrencies and no fiat currencies, the lack of regulations it must follow allows the exchange account verification poloniex to make the signup process easier and less invasive. Aid to government bad, aid to non-government, good.
Liberalised trade bad, welfare good.
Aid is bad and trade is bad.
Loan bad, free money good.
Poverty bad, prosperity good.

That just about sums up this 104-page review of foreign aid to Nepal in 2003 which includes analyses of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and the macroeconomic situation.

A Review of Foreign Aid in Nepal, 2003 is published by the Citizen� Poverty Watch Forum and ActionAid Nepal, and is the fourth in a series of books on foreign aid by the publishers. The book�s bottom line is that foreign aid has been a failure all over the developing world, and since the same formulae are being employed in Nepal, it will fail here too.

Nepal is getting poorer by the day, its income disparity makes it one of the most unequal countries in the world. Insurgency-related migration to the cities has meant that urban poverty is growing exponentially. �It is difficult to accurately assess poverty trends over time,� the authors write, �What we can conclude is that the absolute number of poor people has almost doubled over a period of 25 years.�

So what can be done? Unfortunately, don�t look here for answers. The book doesn�t get further than lamenting the failure of foreign aid and quoting like-minded researchers to lambaste the usual suspects. Even journalists are quoted (the venerable Daniel Lak, whose chronic foreign aid-bashings appear regularly in the pages of this paper) to conclusively prove that foreign aid leads to foreign interference.

This review of the review has to conclude that it is predictable in its conclusions, and those exploring more enlightened analysis should look elsewhere. It comes with three main chapters, one reporting the current macroeconomic scenario, another reviewing foreign aid, and the last discussing the PRSP. The macroeconomic section touches on everything from poverty, GDP to debt servicing, regurgitating readily available government and UN statistics with very little actual analysis. The Nepal Rastra Bank�s monthly economic roundup has fresher statistics than the dated data in this book. The macroeconomic analysis relies on figures that go back to March 2003. The impact of the conflict on macroeconomic indicators, which at the very least deserved a separate chapter, is conspicuous by its absence. There is mention of �negative growth� of 2001/02, but there is almost no explanation for the contraction, which could have made more sense as a fulcrum of the analysis of foreign aid after 2001.

Deficient interpretation of stale statistics leave readers with just too many �why� and �so what� questions. For example, the researchers cite that percentage of regular expenditure for debt servicing increased from about 10 percent in the mid-1970s to 29 percent in 2003/04 but don�t bother to explain why. Was it increase in debt volume in the 29-year-period, or could it be that some debt may have matured? Was it Nepali rupee depreciation? We are left to scratch our heads and figure it out ourselves. If you start from the premise that government is bad, aid is bad and donors all have ulterior motives then your conclusions are going to be limited to knee-jerk rhetoric.

Foreign aid to INGOs grew from 2.7 percent of total in 1990 to 4.56 percent in 1999 who together spend almost 80 percent of the aid going to the sector. What we would have liked to know is what proportion of that was earmarked for bilateral government aid to Nepal, how much was obtained as sub-contracts from Nepal-based donors which is also already counted in the total bilateral aid.

The gist, therefore, is: overcoming poverty (bad) should be everyone�s preoccupation, the PRSP (bad) may not be the solution because of it neo-liberal (bad) macroeconomic underpinnings, also because the World Bank and the IMF (both bad) are involved, and because it aids the process of economic globalisation (bad), and in most countries public hearings of PRSPs did not include civil society (good). Quoting from Panos Briefing papers, the authors go on to demonstrate that international experience with PRSP makes it a flawed democratic exercise, and even if it works it will have worked for the wrong reasons.

Perhaps it would be too much to expect the publishers to provide an alternative ideological driver. But a minimal attempt to objectivise the conclusions would have made them more credible to the politically-not-so-correct readers. After all, we�re not just preaching to the converted are we?

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The aid reality

The Manila-based IBON Foundation (named after the majestic Philippine eagle) has been bringing out the annual monitors of foreign aid with its The Reality of Aid since 1992. Paradoxically funded by donors, the series often became an exercise in self-flagellation since it was a case of OECD countries and the NGOs they support bashing themselves.

But in the past decade or so, the ownership of The Reality of Aid has shifted to the south, and IBON has tried to get its handle on the structural problems with foreign aid that makes it so ineffective in raising living standards of the poor both globally and within countries.

The 2004 edition looks at some good practices, where aid has worked. The lesson: it has worked wherever the local community has taken charge, and where donor agencies have made poverty alleviation the focus of their work. Nationally, greater attention to governance by the aid community has yielded results.

This year�s edition has a political overview which looks at the global mechanisms that hinder aid efficacy, including aid conditionality to push neo-liberal values in the Bush Junior Era. Our own Gopal Siwakoti �Chintan� of the Nepal Policy Institute has a chapter which begins with the sentence: �Nepal is arguably the most beautiful country in the world.� Ahem.

Chintan argues that western donors to Nepal have ignored human rights and governance, for which he has taken his pet projects Kali Gandaki A and Melamchi as examples.

This is an easy-to-use guide for everyone who always wanted to learn a lot more about who gives what and to whom and why, but couldn�t be bothered to ask. For example, did you know that Norway and Denmark gave away nearly one percent of their national wealth in foreign aid? The United States gave only 0.13 percent even though in volume terms it was the world�s largest donor with $15 billion in 2003. Foreign aid in real terms has remained stagnant at $60 billion since 1989. (Kunda Dixit)
> Hallo,

> so in der Richtung stimmt es schon mit der effizienz der Entwicklungshilfe.

> Ob es im einzelnen 95% oder 80% sind, sicher ist, das der gr��te Teil der Entwicklungsgelder versandet, und damit mit sicherheit auch die aktuelle Situation mit verursacht hat.

> Das wird man schwer bestreiten k�nnen. Es ist klar, das Verwaltung kosten verursacht und das Geh�lter gezahlt werden m�ssen, aber das sollte dann nicht pl�tzlich zu 80-90% die Spenden "auffressen", das ist nicht nur ein Affront gegen den Spender, sondern wie am Beispiel Nepal's ersichtlich, ein Affront gegen jene, denen das Geld zugedacht ist.

> Das Maoistenproblem beruht auch zum Teil darauf, das die enorme Korruption der Regierung und der INGO/NGO's das meiste Geld in priate Taschen verschwinden l�sst.

> Leider ist das nun mal so.

> Zum Tourismusboykott ist zu sagen, das dieser noch nirgends funktioniert hat. Aber Petitionen k�nnen durchaus zumindest Eindruck machen.

> Navyo Eller
> www.navyonepal.com

>
> > > 95% ist sicher mal zu hoch gegriffen>

> > Es geht hier nicht um Verwaltungskosten, sondern um Schmiergeld und Unterschlagung durch Regierungsmitglieder und Regierungsangestellte.
> > Bei der Schaetzung Einheimischer lag der Prozentsatz sogar bei 98% !

> > Hartmut

Antwort zu: Entwicklungshilfe.......Tourismusboykott geschrieben von Navyo Eller am 26. August 2004 um 05:21 Uhr: