ÿþ<html> <head> <title> Anti-Corruption Drive Ensures Best Return on Anti-Poverty Fund </title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=EUC-KR"> <meta name="KEYWORDS" lang="en-us" content="Bribery and Corruption, Transparency"> <meta name="KEYWORDS" lang="kr" content="Bribery and Corruption, Transparency"> <meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX"> </head> <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" link="#0000EE" vlink="#551A8B" alink="#FF0000"> <table CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 WIDTH="588" align=center > <tr> <td WIDTH="100%" HEIGHT="11"><img SRC="wwwgztop.gif" height=30 width=588> <img SRC="http://usinfo.state.gov/usinfo/img/assets/3602/WashingtonFile.gif" alt="Washington File"> <p> <font size=-1> <!-- BEGIN DATA BUFFER --> <p>03 April 2007</p> <h3>Anti-Corruption Drive Ensures Best Return on Anti-Poverty Fund</h3> <p class="subhead">Aid most effective when it reinforces good governance, economic freedom</p> <p class="byline">By Andrzej Zwaniecki<br/>USINFO Staff Writer<br/><br/> </p> <div class="photo1"> <div id="p1large" class="popupbox"> <div class="boxtitle"><a href="javascript:;" onclick="document.getElementById('p1large').style.visibility = 'hidden';"> <img src="/articles/images/closeButton.gif" width="60" height="16" alt="Close Window" border="0" align="right"/></a>&nbsp;&nbsp; </div> <div class="boximage"> <img name="LargePhoto1" src="http://photos.state.gov/libraries/475/09a06/090606-cattle-200.jpg" alt="Cattle raising" border="0"/> </div> <div class="boxtext"> Utilizing the threshold program provided by MCC, which includes activities that support government procurement, reform the process for business licensing, strengthen prosecution and judicial systems and make admissions to colleges and universities more transparent, USAID and farmers in Moldova work together to improve cattle raising techniques. (© AP Images)<br/> </div> </div> <div class="photointerior1" style="width:200px;"><script type="text/javascript"><!-- tmpPhoto1=new Image(); function switchPhoto1 () { document.LargePhoto1.src=tmpPhoto1.src; document.getElementById('p1large').style.visibility = 'visible'; } function loadLargePhoto1 () { tmpPhoto1.src ='http://photos.state.gov/libraries/475/09a06/090606-cattle-500.jpg'; tmpPhoto1.onload = switchPhoto1; } //--> </script> <div class="boxtitle_small"><a href="javascript:;" onclick=" loadLargePhoto1(); "><img src="/articles/images/enlargePhoto.gif" width="93" height="23" border="0" alt="Enlarge Photo"/></a></div><a href="javascript:;" onclick=" loadLargePhoto1(); "><img src="http://photos.state.gov/libraries/475/09a06/090606-cattle-200.jpg" border="0" alt="Cattle raising" /></a><div class="boxtext">Utilizing a program provided by MCC, USAID and farmers in Moldova work together to improve cattle raising techniques. (© AP Images)</div></div> </div> <p>Johannesburg, South Africa -- Working with governments that are committed to fight corruption helps ensure that assistance provided by an innovative U.S. development fund -- the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) -- has the greatest impact on people s welfare in developing countries, says a U.S. official.</p> <p> We are getting the greatest poverty-reduction return on our investment in countries that have low levels of corruption or are governed by anti-corruption reformers, said Maureen Harrington, vice president of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), which manages the MCA.</p> <p>Harrington is participating in the Fifth Global Forum on Fighting Corruption, which is being held in Johannesburg , South Africa, where she talked April 2 to <i>USINFO</i>.</p> <p>MCC is based on the principle that aid is most effective when it reinforces good governance, economic freedom and investments in people, according to the corporation s mission statement. MCC is setting a new standard for allocation of performance-based aid as it ties eligibility for assistance directly to performance on publicly available, transparent indicators related to those policies, according to a U.S. statement released by the U.S. delegation to the Global Forum.</p> <p>This innovative approach has generated interest among other donor countries and international organizations, Harrington said, adding that during a recent peer review at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the MCA received high marks for being flexible and pragmatic.</p> <p>But this novel approach is not without controversy. Some private development experts have said that MCC, by depending on strict standards and making an anti-corruption commitment the single most important element among those standards, could divert aid from the countries that need it most. They have argued that nations going through a post-conflict crisis or experiencing extreme poverty are very unlikely to qualify for MCA grants.</p> <p>But Harrington said the MCA was meant to be different from traditional development assistance from the very beginning when President Bush announced it in 2002. The fund focuses on countries whose governments meet certain policy requirements because such governments are more likely to use their own and their donors resources to the benefit of the people, she said.</p> <p>Harrington said other U.S. and international assistance programs are available to help countries that badly need aid but have high levels of corruption.</p> <p>THE MCC THRESHOLD PROGRAM</p> <p>Even if potential recipient nations do not qualify immediately for MCA grants but come close to doing so and commit to reform their policies, the MCC, through its threshold program, helps them meet the qualifying criteria. </p> <p>This program is intended to improve governance, and particularly to expand and accelerate anti-corruption initiatives of reform-minded governments, according to officials. To date, the MCC has approved close to $300 million for threshold agreements with 12 countries: Albania, Burkina Faso, Indonesia, Jordan, Malawi, Moldova, Paraguay, Philippines, Tanzania, Uganda, Ukraine and Zambia.</p> <p>The corporation leaves it up to the threshold countries themselves to identify corruption-related problems and design programs to address them because it believes that ownership of such programs makes them more likely to succeed, Harrington said. </p> <p> They will always know better than anyone else what the key sources of corruption are and how to tackle them, she said.</p> <p>Anti-corruption technical assistance related to the threshold program provided by the MCC through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)  does vary from country to country based on each country s unique challenges, Harrington said. Those programs vary broadly and include activities that support government procurement, reform the process for business licensing, strengthen prosecution and judicial systems and make admissions to colleges and universities more transparent.</p> <p>In return for funding, MCC demands accountability. Threshold agreements signed with individual nations contain specific benchmarks to help measure those nations progress toward the established goals. Some recent examples of such benchmarks include increasing the percentage of students tested for university admission, shortening the time it takes to process corruption cases and reducing the percentage of firms that report bribery in tax collection is frequent.</p> <p>Harrington said the MCC tries to set benchmarks that are challenging but realistic and achievable within the two years those programs run.</p> <p> We recognize that sometimes it would be difficult for a country to stamp out corruption altogether within such a time span, she said.</p> <p>It is too early to evaluate the success rate of the threshold program, according to Harrington; some threshold nations only recently passed a one-year implementation milestone. Among those, many are on track to succeed, she said.</p> <p>Harrington said anti-corruption programs are most successful in those countries that focus on the sources of corruption rather then symptoms.</p> <p>THE IMPORTANCE OF POLITICAL WILL</p> <p>Another U.S. participant in the forum, Elizabeth Hart, a senior anti-corruption adviser at USAID, agreed. She said that political will also plays a critical role in implementing anti-corruption initiatives.</p> <p> Anti-corruption programs need champions, she told <i>USINFO</i>.</p> <p>Transparency, external accountability, public participation, long-term commitment and other factors also matter, Hart said. </p> <p>On the other hand, she said, public anti-corruption campaigns or anti-corruption bodies not supported by specific action are counterproductive. Often the only thing they produce is disillusion among the general public, Hart added.</p> <p>For additional information, see <i><a href="http://usinfo.state.gov/ei/economic_issues/bribery_and_corruption.html">Bribery and Corruption</a></i> and <a href="http://usinfo.state.gov/ei/economic_issues/mca.html">Millennium Challenge Account</a>.</p> <p>(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)</p> </font> </td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>