Posted on Thursday 22nd March 2012
Sumedh Rao, GSDRC Research Fellow, and Heather Marquette have published on 'Corruption indicators in Performance Assessment Frameworks (PAFs) for budget support', as part of the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre’s Issues Papers series.
The paper looks at how corruption indicators have been used in budget support Performance Assessment Frameworks (PAFs) for a variety of purposes, including to control for misappropriation of funds, assess Government performance on fighting corruption, and in some cases act as an aid disbursement trigger.
Drawing both on textual material and interviewees, the study maps PAF corruption indicators and examines their role and effectiveness in monitoring corruption. The study finds that if corruption-related indicators are to be used in PAFs, it is important to:
identify clearly budget support objectives and corruption indicator purpose
develop better outcome, rather than output, indicators; support partner country capacity to develop indicators
work towards a comprehensive diagnostic framework for corruption
In general, the key message of the report is to clarify the objectives of budget support and the purpose of including corruption indicators, and then select indicators that match. Where possible, exploit existing anticorruption processes and align PAFs with national anti-corruption processes, if they exist.
Read the paper: 'Corruption indicators in Performance Assessment Frameworks for budget support' (PDF 1.5MB)
View the paper online: www.u4.no/publications/corruption-indicators-in-performance-assessment-frameworks-for-budget-support/