MDB's Technical Groups
Over the last two years or so, the multilateral development banks (MDBs) and the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (DAC/OECD) have worked through various technical groups on issues such as donor cooperation, country analytic work, financial management, procurement, and environmental assessment. The principal charge of each of the technical groups was to develop a set of good practice standards, principles, or products that donors and partner countries alike could use as a basis for harmonizing their policies, procedures, and practices. The recommendations of these technical groups on good practices were endorsed by participants at the High Level Forum in February 2003.
The multilateral development bank (MDB) technical working groups have focused on financial management, procurement, environment assessments, and analytic work.
Environmental Assessment:
There is considerable diversity among institutions in their mandates and approaches to dealing with social and environmental impacts of development projects. Most institutions routinely consider social impacts that are mediated by the environment (such as the human impacts of water pollution), and many also consider a range of physical/biological impacts on directly affected groups (impacts on downstream water supply, displacement, and adverse impacts on local communities or vulnerable groups are examples).
As part of the overall harmonization process, the Multilateral Financial Institutions Working Group on Environment (MFI-WGE), has prepared “A Common Framework for Environmental Assessment: Converging Requirements of Multilateral Financial Institutions.” The Common Framework is intended to simplify and facilitate donor coordination, promote consistent communication with borrowers, encourage collaborative capacity building, reduce transaction costs for borrowers, and increase development effectiveness. These document and others being prepared by the MFI-WGE do not supercede the policies of participating institutions.
“Common Approaches to Areas Covered by EIA”, a second document of the MFI-WGE, was agreed upon at a technical working group meeting in Washington in April 2003. This document will provide a foundation for harmonizing approaches and building client capacity around commonly used principles and processes in the environmental and social areas that environmental impact assessments may cover.
Other MFI- WGE work currently under way includes Terms of Reference for EIA and for Environmental Management Plans (Asian Development Bank [AsDB]); Guidance on Environmental Audits (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development [EBRD]); and Borrower Capacity Building (African Development Bank [AfDB]). The members of the MFI-WGE are preparing a work plan for collaboration with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on updating the World Bank Pollution Prevention and Abatement Handbook. The next meeting of the MFI- WGE, which will focus on capacity building and country-level harmonization activities, will be hosted by AsDB and held in Bangkok in November 2003. This will be followed by a meeting hosted by the Nordic Investment Bank, to be held in Helsinki in May 2004.
Financial Management:
The MDBs and the OECD-DAC have been conducting technical work on good practices in financial management in separate but closely coordinated teams.
As part of this, specific agreements (the OECD-DAC’s “Good Practice Papers” and the MDBs’ “Frameworks for Collaboration”) were reached on how to work together in the areas of financial management diagnostic work and financial reporting and auditing.
The MDBs and the OECD-DAC members have asked the Public Sector Committee of the International Federation of Accountants to issue an accounting standard for development assistance — a broadly accepted global benchmark to which both donors and aid receiving governments can subscribe. This work is being under collaboratively with input by partner countries, professional groups and the private sector. A draft standard is expected in 2004; the final standard is scheduled to be completed in 2005 following broad consultation.
See Also:
DAC-OECD Joint-Venture on Public Financial Management
Procurement :
Representatives of multilateral development banks (the Harmonization Working Group) have been working together to produce "harmonized" bidding and proposal documents. In October 2002, the MDBs heads of procurement agreed on a harmonized prequalification document for civil works contracts. The heads of procurement have discussed the first draft of a harmonized standard bidding document for procurement of works and of a “Request for Proposal” document on consulting services. They also made a joint recommendation to address policy differences among participating multilateral development banks (MDBs) for consultant selection. They agreed that these policy issues and others related to the eligibility and origin of goods, common definitions of fraud and conflict of interest, and harmonization of national competitive bidding thresholds-should now be addressed by each MDB.
See Also:
Harmonized Bidding and Proposal Documents
DAC-OECD Procurement Capacity Building
Joint OECD/DAC - WORLD BANK Round Table Web site - Strengthening Procurement Capacities
Electronic Government Procurement (e-GP) Working Group - Muiltilateral Development Banks (MDBs)
UNTIED AID - Official Development Assistance (OECD-DAC)
Heads of Procurement (HoP) Meeting (21-23 November 2006, London, U.K.)
