| |
Contributions from
the Column
Monitor
Peacekeeping: No reason to fear of civilian-military cooperation
BMZ budget increases
USA approves Indian three-in-one AIDS pill
D+C author under pressure in Togo
Genetic modifications: Uganda: in search of pest-resistent bananas
Liberia: timber embargo lifted
UN budget released
German government assesses crisis-prevention policy
Gender-related violence: Good governance includes protection for women
A single roof for GTZ and KfW
Poor countries lack tax revenues
8-9/2006
|
|
[ Development cooperation ]
A single roof for GTZ and KfW
The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development has announced moves to closer align Germany’s agencies for financial and technical cooperation. On behalf of the Ministry, PricewaterhouseCoopers evaluated the options and, in early July, the consultancy published its results, speaking of three equally valid models for binding German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and the development bank KfW Entwicklungsbank more closely together.
The consultants’ first proposal is to merge the two organisations to form a new “Development Cooperation Agency”, which could operate as a closed limited company (GmbH) owned by Germany’s Federal Government. The second option would be to transfer ownership of the new agency to KfW banking group. The third possibility would be to integrate GTZ’s units for planning, management and other overarching tasks into the KfW development bank and keep the implementing units separate within a GTZ GmbH under the umbrella of the KfW banking group. This is the model PricewaterhouseCoopers considers easiest to realise in political terms.
GTZ is currently a government-owned GmbH, KfW Entwicklungsbank is a brand of the publicly owned KfW Bankengruppe. The primary function of GTZ and KfW Entwicklungsbank is to implement the policies of Germany’s Development Ministry. Other branches of KfW banking group are subordinate to other ministries of the Federal Government.
In its report, PricewaterhouseCoopers refers to the OECD’s Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness of last year. That multilateral document calls, among other things, for donor harmonisation and closer alignment with target countries’ policies, procedures and institutions. With GTZ and KfW Entwicklungsbank operating as separate entities, PricewaterhouseCoopers finds the present arrangement flawed in that respect as each player had developed its “own procedures and processes”.
On its website, the Development Ministry refers to last year's peer review report by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, which had urged the Federal Government to bring in more reforms to integrate individual structures of German development cooperation more closely and create an “effective engine for development progress”. The report explicitly encouraged putting an end to the “increasingly artificial” distinction between Financial and Technical Cooperation. The Ministry already considered merging the two institutions during the last parliament. (dem)
|
