Only 66% committed education aid disbursed

The News
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Myra Imran

Islamabad

The commitment and disbursement gap in the Official Development Assistance (ODA) in Pakistan’s education sector is becoming all the more evident in view of the fact that only 66 per cent of the ODA committed is disbursed.

These views were expressed at the launch of a study titled ‘A Policy Scan of Official Development Assistance (ODA)’ published by the Pakistan Coalition for Education (PCE). Civil society activists, government officials, media representatives and education experts participated in the event and expressed their views on the issue.

The study shows that the ODA in education sector faces innumerable issues and challenges such as meagre allocation of resources, little focus of multinationals on education, gaps in commitments and actual disbursements, strict aid conditionalities, and lack of implementation and transparency mechanisms.

Highlighting the importance of ODA, Chairman National Standing Committee on Education Abid Sher Ali said it is vital in addressing the missing links in education. “Our enhanced focus, however, should be on generating and mobilising local resources,” he added.

Talking about the inadequate focus of multinationals on education, researcher of the study and Executive Director Centre for Peace & Development Initiatives (CPDI) Mukhtar Ahmed Ali said the trend is evident from the fact that the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank apportion most of the project aid to infrastructure development. He further mentioned that grants constitute only 19 per cent of ODA and the remaining comes in the form of loans.

Assessing the role of ODA in Pakistan, Advisor to Chief Minister Sindh Dr Kaiser Bengali emphasised that as a rule, loans should only be taken for asset creation and should never be taken for budgetary support. However, he cited education as an exception to this rule, as it is not aimed at asset creation but the overall well-being.

He reiterated the importance of foreign assistance but specified four areas of concerns regarding shortage that of teachers, laboratory equipments/instruments, libraries, and research resources like journals/books and scholarships. He also called for comprehensive planning to control the brain drain.

Mohammad Muntasim Tanvir, Campaign Coordinator Asia South Pacific Association for Basic & Adult Education (ASPBAE) - a network of 200 organisations working in 36 countries - spoke on the ODA trends in Asia. He highlighted the inadequacy of aid and low priority accorded to education in the whole region.

He also underlined the key policy demands from the Asian civil society regarding aid, adding that aid should be transparent, unconditional, consistent and better quality grants (instead of loans). “The aid should be monitored through strong accountability measures and should be used in a harmonised process for long term and sustainable projects with full participation from civil society in its design, implementation and monitoring.”

Pakistan Coalition for Education (PCE) is a network, which by design is a forum for initiating, sharing and exchanging dialogues on different education related issues like policy, governance and financing. It encourages dialogues on issues in education with a view to promote awareness among people and create a critical mass for facilitating a positive change and improving upon the overall education scenario.