In view of the progress made by the Government, at the June 2003 PRSP Forum, partners agreed to support the Government's efforts in three key areas, namely: aligning external assistance with the PRSP and the budget cycle; improving coordination and harmonization of their assistance at national and sector levels; and continuing joint efforts to strengthen the national public finance systems.

Recognizing the burden imposed by the existing aid delivery arrangements, the PRSP Forum also endorsed a broad framework for working towards providing resources on a predictable basis; and simplifying and standardizing the procedures for the implementation of ongoing projects.

A time bound Harmonization Action Plan was proposed at the PRSP Forum and has since been updated. It will serve as a management tool.

Development partners have increased in-country donor engagement with capacity/authority to participate in the harmonization process.

The second World Bank harmonization mission resulted in a proposed Comprehensive Action Plan. Donors and Government are considering areas for future harmonization work, including procurement. The Government has initiated actions to improve public resource management and created conditions that facilitate harmonization of donor policies, procedures and processes by adopting a new Procurement Code and program for procurement reform.

Areas of future work are likely to include bidding documents for national competitive bidding (NCB), upper limit thresholds for national competitive bidding, post/prior document review limits, and eligibility criteria for state-owned-enterprises (SOE).

The Education sector program is perceived by the government and donors as a good practice model that sets the standard for harmonization in Niger. This is encouraging both government and donors to expand efforts across priority sectors. Donors currently support different programs and activities. For example, the financing of the sector is secured through budget support (EC); earmarked funding (France); and projects with parallel implementation systems and multiple Project Management Units (PMUs).

A Partnership Framework to support the Government's Ten-year Education Development Program was agreed and signed during the PRSP Forum with the main objective of developing a SWAp.

The PRSP Working group (WG) on education, led by Canada and the Ministry of Education has achieved good progress in improving coordination, and integration, and is moving towards convergence to a single implementation process.

The World Bank has recently approved a project to strengthen the public finance and implementation system by ensuring greater donor synergy and complementarity. The project preparation under the Ministry's leadership and in coordination with other donors has laid the foundation for moving gradually to unified implementation procedures and practices.

A jointly agreed set of progress indicators is under consolidation, and a joint review and evaluation process is being prepared.

OECD/DAC Working Party has developed indicators (in a survey instrument) to monitor progress on harmonization and alignment. Field-testing has been completed in all the fourteen countries.

This exercise coincided with the annual survey on Budget Support Alignment done by the Strategic Partnership with Africa (SPA). Six Sub-Saharan African countries (Ethiopia, Mozambique, Niger, Senegal, Tanzania, and Zambia) of the eighteen countries in the SPA survey, were also included in the OECD/DAC survey. SPA has worked with DAC to avoid duplication, so the SPA questionnaire was included within the (more comprehensive) DAC questionnaire (part D) for these six countries.

WB was the lead donor for the combined survey for Niger which was scheduled for completion by July 31, 2004.

A draft OECD/DAC survey report has been prepared.