Evaluation of Finland’s Aid for Trade

Kate Bird, Liz Turner, Maria Suokko, Laura Rovamaa, Joseph Muraguri Gathii

Säätytalo, Helsinki29th August 2011

1. Introduction2. Aims and methods of the study3. Findings and recommendations

What is Aid for Trade?

Source: OECD

Finland’s AfT priorities

Sectors• Agriculture• Forestry• Energy

Themes• Private Sector• Information Society• Environment• Cross-cutting

themes

AfT categories• Building productive

capacity• Economic infra• Trade policy and

regulations

Geographical focus• Countries• Regions • Multilateral

organisations

AfT categories covered by the evaluationTrade policy and regulations (TP&R)- Approximately 8% of Finland’s bilateral AfT (2006-09; disburs.)- Bulk of support provided through multilateral organisations

Economic infrastructure (EI)- Approximately 20% of Finland’s bilateral AfT (2006-09; disburs.)- Main areas of intervention related to AfT are energy (including

environment) and ICT (e.g. Tanzania, Zambia)

Building productive capacity (BPC)- Approximately 72% of Finland’s bilateral AfT (2006-09; disburs.)- Main areas of intervention related to AfT are PSD, agri-business,

forestry, agriculture and mining

1. Introductionntroduction2. Aims and methods of the study3. Findings and recommendations

Aims of the evaluationRationale

Share lessons-learnedMake practical, concrete recommendations (particularly on Finland’s future AfT policy and support)

Purpose Assess the present AfT Action Plan (targeting, organizational set-up and implementation)

Main objective Present an overview of Finland’s AfT to help the MFA to enhance its role and effectiveness

Overall approach

• Thematic evaluation – Three thematic case studies (Economic Infrastructure, Building

Productive Capacity and Trade Policy and Regulations)

• Systemic approach

• Four phases– Inception phase; desk study; field study; final reporting

Methodology

• Evaluation matrix– Matrix developed, based on ToR

• Document review– Review of a sample of 21 bilateral and 14 multilateral project

and programme documents• Key informant interviews

– MFA officials, embassy staff, donors, government and private sector representatives and implementing organisations

– In six partner countries in Africa and Asia– 11 international and multilateral organisations in Geneva and

Brussels

Evaluation criteria (1)

• Relevance – Intervention is in line with beneficiary needs and policy

environment• Coherence

– Policies taken into account in planning and implementation (Finland’s and partner country’s)

• Complementarity– Interventions supporting one another and partners contributing

usefully• Co-ordination

– Two or more development partners working well together (mobilising aid or harmonise activities)

Evaluation criteria (2)• Efficiency

– Good use of resources to generate outputs/ results (quantity, quality, time)

• Effectiveness– Intervention has achieved what it set out to

• Impact – Has there been progress towards the overall objective(s)

• Sustainability – Continued benefits from intervention after external support ends

• Finnish added value– The added value provided by Finnish support

AfT – conceptual framework

1. Introduction2. Aims and methods of the study3. Findings and recommendations

Find

ing

1 Linkages between sectors and the wider economy, including trade, are not always well understood and articulated.

Reco

mm

enda

tion

1 Improve understanding of trade context by identifying national and regional binding constraints to trade through deeper reviews of existing analysis or through jointly commissioning gap-filling work.

Find

ing

2 Some MFA officials and implementing partners understand Finnish AfT as Finnish aid for Finnish trade (in other words, trade promotion), partly because of ambiguity around the promotion of Finnish Value Added. Re

com

men

datio

n 2 Clarify the purpose of

AfT, identifying the relative importance of trade promotion for Finnish companies, products and expertise versus development objectives for partner countries, including Finnish Value Added.

Find

ing

3 The AfT Action Plan is relevant and in line with the overall Development Policy Programme. However, there is no clear conceptual framework showing how AfT contributes to enhanced trade performance of different sectors.

Reco

mm

enda

tion

3 Develop a conceptual framework that better articulates the links between AfT, pro-poor growth and poverty reduction, indicating how sectoral interventions can link to the enhanced volume and value of goods traded by partner countries.

Find

ing

4 Few AfT interventions articulate how their interventions will achieve trade-related outcomes. Most focus on inputs, activities and – rarely - outputs.

Reco

mm

enda

tion

4 All interventions classified as AfT should have a results chain identifying the contribution that they will make to trade-related outcomes.

Find

ing

5 The AfT portfolio contains over 90 bilateral, regional, multilateral and joint interventions with the smallest contributions amounting to just 160 000 Eur per annum.

Reco

mm

enda

tion

5 Adopt a more strategic approach to identifying and planning AfT interventions, and rationalise the number of projects and programmes.

Find

ing

6 Project and programme level targets tend to be weak. The indicators used are often not SMART (Specific; Measurable; Achievable; Relevant; and Time-bound) and are often limited to the input and activity level and not outcome and impact levels. Re

com

men

datio

n 6 Identify common high-

level results anticipated of AfT and develop clearly articulated high-level SMART indicators and targets at the goal/impact level.

Find

ing

7 MFA officials (advisors and embassy staff) do not always understand how their sector fits within the AfT agenda.

Reco

mm

enda

tion

7 Communicate and explain the AfT conceptual framework and encourage collaboration across sectors and implementing partners.

Find

ing

8 At present, internal guidance for designing, implementing and monitoring AfT is inadequate.

Reco

mm

enda

tion

8 Build advisory capacity and resources so that sectoral advisors can provide more support on AfT across the MFA and to embassies.

Find

ing

9 Guidance on how to achieve trade-related outcomes through sectoral interventions (without weakening sector specific achievements) is weak.

Reco

mm

enda

tion

9 Improve guidance for AfT by incorporating the new AfT conceptual framework into the new AfT Action Plan (or similar) as well as MFA’s new project/programmes planning system.

Find

ing

10Quality assurance processes are insufficient to ensure that trade-related outcomes are clearly articulated in (broad definition) AfT interventions or that poverty reduction, pro-poor growth or cross-cutting issues are sufficiently integrated.

Reco

mm

enda

tion

10

Improve quality assurance across sectors and aid modalities.

Find

ing

11 The mix of aid modalities, linkages and potential complementarities are not always considered and projects and programmes are often considered in isolation. Re

com

men

datio

n 11 Promote greater

synergies between interventions funded under different modalities, through improved information sharing, particularly between the multilateral and bilateral portfolios.

Find

ing

12 The coverage of the AfT portfolio across the different categories lags behind current global trends in AfT.

Reco

mm

enda

tion

12 Rebalance the Finnish AfT portfolio by increasing the proportion of funds allocated to current global priorities (e.g. regional economic integration and trade-related infrastructure).

Find

ing

13Little evidence of AfT programmes integrating an understanding of power (gender relations), with coverage of cross-cutting issues relatively low. For instance, on gender interventions tend to deal with gender at the level of numbers of women benefiting from an intervention.

Reco

mm

enda

tion

13

Integrate cross-cutting issues systematically throughout all AfT interventions by improving guidance, providing additional advisory resources.

Find

ing

14Lesson learning is ad hoc and embassy staff and implementing partners do not have access to systematic case studies or guidance on AfT.

Reco

mm

enda

tion

14

Enhance internal learning by maximising opportunities to identify and share lessons of good practice by communication between AfT-related interventions, developing and distributing short guidance notes on different aspects of AfT (e.g. at MFA in-weeks and through the intranet system).

Thank you for your attention!