Assessments of U.S.-financed “trade capacity building,” or TCB, projects already have been conducted, but the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has thus far failed to take action in response to those evaluations, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has concluded. Consequently, it remains difficult for the government understand why “annual TCB funding has increased from $1.35 billion in 2005 to $1.69 billion in 2010.”
According to the July 28 report, “The United States Provides Wide-ranging Trade Capacity Building Assistance, but Better Reporting and Evaluation Are Needed,” twenty-four U.S. agencies from 2005 to 2010 provided over $9 billion in TCB assistance “to help more than 100 countries reduce poverty, increase economic growth, and achieve stability through trade.” This figure is specific to the loosely defined realm of TCB, rather than to overall foreign aid.
The U.S. government TCB database has reported that annual TCB funding has increased from $1.35 billion in 2005 to $1.69 billion in 2010, but the database does not adequately describe certain factors underlying this growth and other significant changes in the composition of TCB funding…
Clear reporting and transparent methodology and data collection are essential to understanding levels of funding and changes in the nature of TCB over time. USAID has improved its assessment of TCB activities, including developing performance indicators and taking the positive step of commissioning a multicountry evaluation of the effects of TCB, but it has yet to develop plans to make use of the evaluation's valuable insights.
The report acknowledged that USAID claims to have already taken steps to improve its assessment of available data—steps it says are “consistent with the GAO recommendations.”
Source documents:
2) Full text of report (.pdf; 65 pages).
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