"Budget support has become an increasingly important instrument in the context of a partnership-based approach to development assistance. Compared to traditional modes of aid delivery, it promises greater country ownership, reduced transaction costs, better donor coordination, scaling up of poverty reduction and potentially greater development effectiveness. This book presents a timely and valuable review of key concepts, issues, experiences and emerging lessons relevant to budget support. It provides an overview of principal characteristics, expectations and concerns related to budget support, key design and implementation issues, as well as some practical experiences. The contributors include government representatives from developing countries, leading academic scholars, bilateral development agencies and development practitioners from international financial institutions, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. They present a wide range of views on key issues such as the choice of instruments, alignment of budget support with country programs, predictability, and coordination and conditionality. The authors draw their insightful analysis on the contemporary research and evaluation work, as well as the broad practical experience with budget support. This book will be of great interest to practitioners in aid-recipient countries and international financial institutions, bilateral agencies and civil organizations involved in budget support."

Master's Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Politics - Topic: Development Politics, grade: 1,0, University of Birmingham (International Development Department), language: English, abstract: This paper deals with the aid instrument budget support and discusses its strengths and weaknesses in terms of the expected effects of the instrument in areas such as donor harmonisation, ownership, aid effectiveness and accountability. By presenting the international context in which the rise of program-based approaches, such as budget support, took place and by summarizing the actual debate about the instrument and its effectiveness, the paper elaborates a set of assumptions and hypothesises which are affecting the overall performance of the instrument and have to be addressed based on the specific country context. In consequence, it examines and tests these assumptions by critically analyzing the Multi Donor Budget Support in Ghana based on a field study conducted in Accra in July 2010. The central argument of the paper is that general budget support can be one of the most effective aid instruments available at the time, as long as problems inherent to the instrument are addressed and tackled to prevent negative side effects. It comes to the conclusion that the MDBS in Ghana, although there is still room for improvement and entry points for critique, is a functioning example on how to acknowledge and implement the principles of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action. Especially the quality of the policy dialogue and initiatives taken to avoid negative side effects in areas such as domestic as well as mutual accountability and ownership could become valuable examples for others to follow.

This paper considers approaches towards improving the predictability of aid to low income countries, with a special focus on budget support. In order to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, the donor community is increasing aid flows while pushing for more coordination and tighter performance-based selectivity. However, these factors may increase the unpredictability of aid from current levels, which are already high enough to impose significant costs. Predictability is a particular challenge in the area of budget support, which will continue to increase in importance as aid is sought to underpin longer-term recurrent spending commitments. Budget support reduces transactions costs and drains on capacity, but it tends to be more vulnerable to fluctuations than multi-year project support. Poor predictability raises the threat of a low-level equilibrium: countries, budgeting prudently within a medium-term fiscal framework, will discount commitments; donors will see few funding gaps, so pledges will fall. With some countries discounting aid commitments in formulating budgets, some already see signs of this happening. To improve predictability, donors must extend their funding horizons. However, even if this can be done, several major issues will remain at country level. First, how can countries deal with residual short-run volatility of disbursements relative to commitments? Second, can donors lengthen commitment horizons to individual developing countries without excessive risk of misallocating aid? Third, within a country's overall aid envelope, how should donors set the shares of project aid and budget support? Finally, the paper considers the other main approach to budget support, the output or outcome-driven approach of the European Union. The paper concludes that many of these issues can be addressed. Simple spending and savings rules built around a buffer reserve fund of 2-4 months of imports can help smooth public spending. Aid can be pre-committed several years ahead with only small efficiency losses, using a strategy of "flexible pre-commitment." Guidelines can be set to limit the volatility of budget support while keeping it performance-based, and past experience can be used more systematically to develop "outcome" norms to better guide aid allocation.

'The World Bank Research Program 2008-2009: Abstracts of Current Studies' is a compendium of research projects initiated, ongoing, or completed in fiscal years 2008 to 2009 by World Bank staff and consultants.

This book presents an overview of the key debates that took place during the Economic and Social Council meetings at the 2007 High-level Segment, at which ECOSOC organized its first biennial Development Cooperation Forum. The discussions also revolved around the theme of the second Annual Ministerial Review, "Implementing the internationally agreed goals and commitments in regard to sustainable development."--P. 4 of cover.