"I believe that there are real power relationships between donors and recipients and that although we might speak in terms of partnership, and there might be real moves underway to make the relationship more equal, it can never be an equal partnership. To talk of DPs hides this real relationship (particularly relevant when dealing with such a sensitive subject like corruption)."

"I find the concept of partnership idealistic, and problematic. Today, development cooperation should be built on a partnership relation. One fundamental feature in a partnership is that you should not expect your partner to deceive you. As we know, a lot of fiddling is going on with donor funds. And we still seem to want to maintain the chimera of a trustworthy partner. Are we ingenuous, naive or just plain simple-minded?"

"Smaller donors, on their own, are very limited in what they can do on their own with respect to many of these big, complex issues. This implies a need for more collaborative approaches but as we all know, these are easy to talk about and much harder to achieve in practice."

"Developing meaningful strategies and operational approaches is time consuming and I strongly feel that the only way that small bilateral Agencies can make a difference is to work closely in partnership with other Donors, IFIs and of course Partner Governments."

"I think it is crucial that donors (should not always be like-minded!) jointly develop an approach and strategy to support curbing corruption in the countries they provide funding to. It is crucial that the networks remain open and do not focus only on like-mindedness. The latter could be crucial to act as an intermediate with a range of other agencies to create a common understanding and to lobby for the mutual accountability issue."

"We should be playing a stronger advocacy role with the IFIs on corruption issues. Whether the World Bank would call themselves non-political or apolitical cannot shield them from taking a firmer grip on the issue. The IFIs represent the largest donor/lender by far in most cases. And they are under the same "disbursement pressure" as the bilaterals, and "pushing money" will not always benefit the best projects, ref. the Bujagali Dam project in Uganda..."

"In Bangladesh there is a coordinated anti-corruption working group for members to the Local Consultancy Group. However, in this group, not only fully "like-minded" donor countries and multilateral organisations participate. A strengthened coordination between like-minded countries would strengthen their position in the field. However, some of them are quite small. In practice, the view of the major donors or financers (WB, DFID, UNDP) dominate since they have the strength."

"What is crucial for initiatives like U4 partner agency coordination is to keep people informed, to challenge best practices, to develop new thinking, to inform people about new developments and to create a forum for dialogue and expertise. I would need as much input from experts as I would need to exchange information with other practitioners or policy developers. Very often we are generalists and unless we have a good and thorough understanding of some basic principles and evolutions in the field of anti-corruption, we will keep on developing the same type 'good practices' in tackling corruption. Our thinking needs to be updated, challenged, put into question, and we need to be trained."

"I feel that there is little awareness among the donors themselves around how to react when corruption is disclosed. What do I as a programme officer do to prevent corruption in the programmes I am responsible for? What actions do I take if corruption is disclosed? I think that, although donors are working in different fields and on different programmes, we could benefit from a joint reaction pattern when corruption occurs and thereby learn from the experiences of others. This is a challenge for future donor cooperation in Tanzania."

"For me harmonisation and alignment is a good process to combat corruption. On the one hand national systems will be reinforced and civil servants are able to work within this specific system and procedures. Alignment enforces respect of national systems."

"If periods of tightening development budgets really are favourable for introducing anti-corruption measures, donors and aid agencies should start with abolishing the usual habit of using development budgets for buying good-will from political decision makers. Practices like providing cars, computers and "study trips" abroad have always been presented as a way of getting free hands for a presumably independent project execution. In political important countries like Egypt even the granting of certain projects can be considered as an attempt of donors to buy political compliance to western regional strategies. For donors, abolishing these practices means to face possible consequences of not getting certain agreements signed, and to be forced to cut an already granted budget (and to loose it for the following fiscal years). This in turn is extremely difficult, since the main donors' criteria for the importance of a regional department and its director still consists in the amount of the budget which she or he has "placed". Consequently, one of the first steps to curb corruptive practices within the cooperation business would be to cut the still existing link between the amount of money handled by a donor's department, and the success, power and influence attributed to this department and its director."

"The culture in Pakistan is such that donors pay honorariums (salary top ups) to civil servants who are tasked to work on projects funded by donor agencies. These civil servants are already on government payroll. The donors present the argument that the extra money is to keep the officials motivated and get the project running. Isn't it a form of bribery? The donors are paying the civil servants for the work they are supposed to do anyway whether or not they are paid extra by donors. Aren't the donors encouraging/promoting this culture of pay us extra we will deliver otherwise nothing gets done. Shouldn't we the donors be thinking of other ways to tackle this issue of motivation?"

"From the perspective of implementing projects in collaboration with government agencies one can well see the attraction of topping up salaries. Civil servant pay is low, resources to implement the work are often minimal and workers under motivated. Topping up in such a situation looks like a way to 'get things moving' or to get things done which otherwise might never get off the ground."

"In the search of a donor-success-story the donors turn a blind eye to what's happening on the ground. When aid flows in quantities like the case in Mozambique there is definitely an increased opportunity. Public sector reforms have often been harsh in reducing public salaries, and when you add the increased flow of funds and a weak judiciary, it opens up for corruption (incentive, opportunity, risk)."

"The donors should have to expect that with this huge amount of money, lack of proper coordination mechanisms on the part of donors, and without having good monitoring mechanisms corruption may happen. It took the donors few years to ask for a comprehensive audit to find out that about 1.5 million dollars were set a side in a different bank account. Whatever the reasons, whether it was set aside for personal purposes (director own interest) or the interest of the organization, it shows improper practice from the donor agencies that may lead to corruption."

"One example in the Palestinian Territories is that all donor country representatives and international NGOs for different reasons have interests in the Human Rights sector. The Palestinian Territories have a population of a little bit more than three million inhabitants but has plenty of Palestinian and Israeli Human Rights Organisations that operate there. One of the organizations called (name withheld) have at some point more than 35 different donor agencies supporting them, an annual budget of several million dollars. Some donors have supported the core budget but others support different projects run by the organization. Especially at the end of the fiscal year, donors are interested in spending and less on appraising whether the organization is in need for money or not."

"Because Benin is looked upon as doing well in the democratisation process (compared to his neighbours), there is also a tendency in the donor community to accept a certain level of corruption and not to be too rigid with conditioning development aid (especially the two politically correct subjects of budget support and decentralisation). Donors' willingness to give aid (or pressure to spend) can contribute to aid programmes being implemented regardless of the (non)existence of adequate systems for channelling aid. So aid does not only overlook the corruption sometimes, but can indeed facilitate it."

"I am not aware of any institutional set up for harmonizing anti-corruption activities between donor agencies. Concerning the reasons for this lack of initiative and coordination between donors in the field of corruption I think the donor community is rather keen on keeping the democratization process ongoing without giving too much attention to corruption."

"The strengths of co-ordination are less duplication of efforts, better success by comparing successful and unsuccessful efforts of previous projects and concentrating on the former. The benefits of synergy are evident through co-ordination of a larger budget and workforce and more effective lobbying of the central authorities through the influence of that budget and the political authority that it represents. The weakness are that where the aid is provided as an attempt to wield broader political influence (USAID) then the objectives of that influence will be diluted or compromised through participation in a harmonized program. However offsetting these harmonized efforts will draw fewer accusations or suspicious that ulterior political motivations are behind initiatives for anti-corruption."

"Several donors are moving towards programmatic forms of cooperation such as General Budget Support or Sector Programme Support. Critics question whether PFM systems and control and oversight mechanisms are sufficiently developed. In my view there seems to exist a contradiction here, between donor discourse on Development Effectiveness (Paris Declaration), the need for alignment to recipient country systems and to limit recipient country transaction costs, on the one hand, and the ever increasing claim to combat corruption on the other. At least, many donors do not seem fully prepared to await that recipient country systems have matured in this respect. Pressure to disburse may be too high."

"I think that one mayor reason why a lot of anti-corruption activities/measures are failing is because they are based on short-term thinking and often are imposed from the "outside" and don't come from within. This is often driven by the fact that most donors only think in a 3 or 4 year time span (project phase). They often ignors the fact that the main cause lies in the current values and culture which have been exposed for a long time by existing corruption practices and is being perceived by the current population as "normal way of living". The donors prefer to "ignore" these causes, because 1. they are politically sensitive and 2. they take too long to change."

"There is no dearth of challenges. Apart from the classical divergence between Headquarters and countries offices on policy and programmes, there are also personality clashes between donor community staff on the ground. For example, some people are not inclined to share information and this makes it extremely difficult to effectively work with others. Some donors have a limited (in terms of numbers and professional capacity) or no presence in the country or a particular sector; this makes it hard and sometimes impossible to harmonize as they do not always opt for a silent partnership."

"Donors have one or more departments working on corruption: the U4 project portfolio shows many initiatives. However, what becomes more and more clear for me as well is that these efforts are most likely limited to the certain departments of these donors whose work it is to battle corruption: with other words, anti-corruption efforts are not 'owned' by the complete donor, only by one or more departments."

"The result is a patchwork of donor interventions with no coherent strategy in the medium term. This is a symptom of a much wider donor problem - the disconnection between country offices and policy set at headquarters. Whilst the OECD-DAC initiative receives much attention at the various policy making headquarters of donors, much of the knowledge and policy remains in Paris, London, Stockholm and does not translate into best practice on the ground. DFID has a policy of encouraging pooling of donor resources and greater harmonisation through joint working but it is difficult to achieve consensus on this in practice."

"It is simply not a pleasant task to accuse someone else of having the fingers in the till. But in a complex world as foreign aid it takes two to tango, and we ought to look closer at our own banks, contractors, consultancy firms and businessmen! In the field it is in the end often consultancy firms that actually do a lot of our work. According to sources within the consultancy "business" I have heard that they are endlessly having to put "sugar on top" their tenders in order to win them. And they are often not engaged in anti-corruption work, or go to work-shops about anti-corruption, as the DP´s do, and should probably be targeted more often."

"In Nicaragua we are a small, bilateral donor. Compared to WB, USAID, IDB, EU our financial power is limited. Political power is based on (personal) relations and / or financial influence."

"It is "easier" for multilateral organisations to carry forward the anti-corruption agenda where national interests are at stake."

"The main challenge ahead will be in seeing that we keep the momentum going, once the external mission is gone. With a very small but very stretched donor community, devoting staff time and attention to coordination will be a challenge."

"There is a reasonable degree of donor-coordination on this project. The Dutch are the lead-donor and in general a very active donor in this sense. It remains difficult from time to time to align all procedures. In this specific case it was the Swiss who found it difficult to accept that an audit-report was presented to the organization itself instead of to the donors first. Their fear was that (name withheld - in mention an anti-corruption organisation) would possibly bribe the auditors in case of undesired conclusions. The other donors held the opinion that the organisation itself ordered an audit (as per contract-conditions for the financing of the program) and was thus entitled to receive the audit-report themselves and comment on it. In the end it worked out that way. No malversations were reported though it became very clear that the output of the program was behind schedule."

"Poor coordination by government and donors alike has meant that there is no forum for a coordinated stance and influencing happens in an ad hoc manner through individual donor projects. The frequent re-shuffling of ministers has prevented the development of a medium to long term vision on anti-corruption and reform and has made it difficult for donors to engage in individual ministries. This can have strong repercussions for reform. For example, the Minister for Education has recently set out a formidable set of unpopular reforms to tackle corrupt practices in higher education, which could have been supported by donors through key public awareness campaigns, but was carried out in isolation resulting in considerable political difficulty in implementation as university rectors and professors still exercise considerable power."

"Past experience demonstrates that the Government of China is not interested in donor coordination to any great extent, preferring instead to have bilateral relationships with a host of donors, picking and choosing the expertise and experience it likes best. While this does not preclude the possibility of donor coordination, the competition between donors that this approach generates makes it more difficult to properly prioritize and sequence anti-corruption initiatives and projects as part of a larger reform strategy."

"In addition to the funds Cambodia receives from its official donors, China is investing heavily in infrastructure. This takes place outside of the structure of CG meetings - and it is considered by many - in competition to the OECD-driven system of ODA. China has recently been highly praised by the Cambodian Prime Minister for providing substantial assistance to Cambodia without imposing any conditions, or as the PM called it 'without interfering in the country's internal affairs."

"I think donor coordination in Bolivia was so successful a few years back, because the Government encouraged such coordination, and because there was a relative consensus between the Government and donors on what to do. Also there was a general positive atmosphere around donor coordination. At that time Bolivia was considered the "best student in the class" in terms of donor coordination, ownership etc. That's why it is so paradoxical to see in what situation the country is now. Being self-critical in retrospect, I do believe that donor coordination and consensus was maybe too good. Too few critical voices and points-of-views were raised within the donor community. Everyone was so keen of being friends with everyone. Donors have now become more scattered, as a reaction to the more chaotic situation. This I would say is a natural reaction; donors realising that their previous partners did not represent the Bolivian people to the extent they had believed."

"When our government (Yemen) is talking about corruption they usually talk about petty forms of corruption which they have controlled to a large extent, they have stopped others from stealing to lessen the impacts of what the government is stealing. Occasionally, the government gets rid of some officials they are not in favour off by highlighting their corrupt practices and feeding them to the public. Plus, it looks good on paper when donors are convinced that the major causes of corruption are in governance issues that relates to the capacity of the country. And then when donors fail to understand the problem all together they blame it on bigger wide concepts such as political will. Are we so naive to think that if we give the rights incentives to the government then they will start helping the people all of a sudden?"

"At Consultative Group meetings, donors speak out with a united voice in opposition to the rampant and systemic corruption that exists in Cambodia and the negative effects it has on the country. They also have technical working groups that discuss corruption and what needs to be done to address it. However, in the absence of a political commitment on the part of the Government to deal with the problem, donor interventions will be of limited value. Here I refer to Harald Mathisen's article about endemic corruption in Albania: … anti-corruption programmes of the bilateral and multilateral donors will have very limited impact as long as they do not address the fundamental problem of most countries with endemic corruption levels - that is, the lack of political will due to involvement of senior government officials in corrupt networks."

"Oftentimes, the necessity of the political will in the aid receiving countries is mentioned as one of the key conditions of successfully fighting corruption. I would like to add to this: is there really political will to successfully contribute toward the fight to end corruption in the aid giving countries, which might mean e.g. spending less development aid in a certain year (thus having a problem in how to explain in their own country why not all was spent?)."

"Anti-Corruption is in most cases new on the donor agenda. To get started it is advisable that donors get together to design a strategy that allows for a more pro-active role of the donor community. The aim should be to assist the government, private sector and civil society in collectively elaborating a corruption risk assessment, supporting or complementing various institutional assessments, defining an anti-corruption agenda as well as clarifying and respecting roles."

"Donors have recently recognised that action is required on different fronts in their international anti-corruption and governance strategies thereby AC efforts have many entry points. Thus, SIDA's approach to power analysis when there is a lack of political will is to support action inside government systems, pressure from outside and strengthened demand for reform from below. Similarly, USAID observes that diplomacy, international law enforcement efforts, and development assistance are complementary and mutually reinforcing dimensions."

"Externally funded projects might not be the right vehicle to target corruption directly. It is of course a very sensitive issue and individual donors are obviously not in the position to interfere too much in internal country affairs. Initiatives to direct targeting of corruption should come from within the country, with if needed a supporting role of the donors. But since that is still happening too little, donors tend to initiate (second best) projects with an implicit AC relevance."

"A more direct involvement in the political sphere has to be accepted. The pure apolitical technocratic approach can no longer be maintained in any segment of international cooperation: all policies have political dimensions that would better be brought into the open and be discussed."

"I would like to see donors being more outspoken on the issues of corruption. If donor ministers and senior staff spoke out about corrupt issues and practices, it would give the general population of all countries a greater sense of the importance of why systems and processes free from corruption is the ideal."

"First of all the donor-recipient relationship need not be burdened as long as respect and reciprocity between the two partners is maintained. It should be made clear that the struggle against corruption is a permanent and world-wide issue, that every donor country at home has to tackle the very same problem. No donor organisation can suggest that it is ´clean´ or position itself at a ´moral high ground´. The donor should stick to general global business-like norms, instead of taking a rather moral course. So, it would be better to encourage ethical discussions among institutions and people within the recipient country, instead of stressing or imposing ´own´ standards. Also, own moral leadership can be encouraged."

"Increase stakeholder access to knowledge. Leadership (civil society or government) to fight corruption has to come from within countries. There is a danger of the donors getting too far ahead and we need to seek improved ways of ensuring that other stakeholders have equal access to knowledge."

"That is the point where the importance of NGO's and religious communities becomes evident. Such organisations and institutions do have much less money than official development projects, but they are generally less short-sighted. In ex-Zaire for example, catholic missions were a kind of passive observers sharing the fate of the poor, and did start to play an important role, when official development aid had been withdrawn and state institutions had collapsed. Many self-help structures in dissolving (failed) states are basic cells of integrity in a corrupt environment and IFI's and development agencies should consider these structures as vehicles for changing attitudes. To this behalf official development agencies need more freedom to conclude project agreements with non-governmental institutions. Top-down approaches as they are inherent to the U4 partner agencies' objectives should be complemented by bottom-up initiatives."

"it is worth mentioning recently established DFID/World Bank Donor Secretariat. This is a good coordination mechanism for Technical Cooperation to civil service, public administration and budget reforms in Russia to consolidate donors' efforts and ensure effective co-operation between donors' projects and efforts by the Russian Government in the course of reforms' implementation. The Secretariat gained a lot of respect from Russian officials in charge and also acts as a good resource centre of best practice available."

"The advantage of having different coordination groups is that one can play a "bad cop, good cop" mechanism with the government, provided that the external parties do interact with each other."

"It would further be interesting if development partners more explicitly could mainstream anti-corruption strategies in the different sector programmes with a link to the national anti-corruption efforts in Kenya. One example is the GTZ Open Fund to support Good Governance where there is a governance mainstreaming process (promotion of good governance principles such as transparency, accountability and participation) in the priority areas water, health and agriculture."

"I plea that we use the diagnostic conducted by other (smaller and bigger) donors. One of the problems that I see in the way we cooperate is that donors tend to conduct every stage of project cycle themselves. My thinking is that if one of the donors has better tools for identifying risk of corruption for example or perhaps more experience in working in particular circumstances, if possible we should use their existing information or their assistance. It's just an idea..."

"Particularly for smaller donors, for better diagnostics (or greater attention to diagnostic work that has been done), looking carefully at evaluative work and lessons learned, developing thoughtful but flexible strategies, working out collaborative approaches with others, - and avoiding the "Ready, fire, aim" approach to project development."

"There is a lack of clear upfront analysis of the causes of corruption, before commitment to funding. There needs to be a more concerted bilateral approach, combined with the vigorous application of risk assessment and U4 partner agency objectives. The impression I get is that both DP's and recipients are more than happy to sign up to laudable objectives, but at the end of the day it is disbursement or lending which carries the day."

"Besides the national level analysis of corruption, it is important that development partners in cooperation with GoK carry out a good diagnosis as part of the different programmes and projects in order to set benchmarks. In a situation where the political will is questioned it is important to see if improvements are made within the different sectors."

"All too often though in poor countries, corruption takes a lower priority than providing things like health and education and water. We all know that these things are interrelated, however Organisations such as DFID need results, and in order to raise the agenda of corruption some more powerful impact assesment tools are required. If the impact of corruption was measured in a more effective manner, then corruption would leap up a few priorities and feature more in Aid programmes."

"We have very crude tools in detecting corruption (audits). As I see it, maintaining fluid contacts with many stakeholder groups in the programmes and projects that we finance, keeping an ear on the ground, may permit us to detect signals of corruption at a more early stage. That is where the contradiction might be in relation to the partnership concept, showing that our trust in the partners is not complete."

"We since long adopted the policy of partnership where the responsibility for the planning and execution of development projects/programs to a very large extent is left to the partner country and where we limit our role as advisor and controller. For instance the purchasing function is routinely undertaken by the partner country. This represents an extra challenge as to monitoring the efficient use of the contributions. Here we are working together with harmonising our approaches and alignment with the partner countries in the so-called Nordic+ countries group. We have developed a joint procurement policy which is formulated to deter and avoid corruption."

"It is easy to understand why donors may impose aid conditionality. There is no point in bragging about how much money were disbursed into a particular country if it ended in a few people's pockets and did not make any impact on the lives of the poor people. In my view, as long as the strategies work, whether they are donor-induced does not really matter. My inclination for a home-grown approach is mainly to ensure sustainability, after the donor's input has phased out."

"I think more widely many would argue that the questioning and punishing approach - perhaps best exemplified by crude conditionality - actually encourages our partners to be less open or just plain deceptive. Certainly I think we're now coming to realise that conditionality around political governance does not lead to long-term, country-owned processes of change. And yet countries might still be able to jump through the hoops to meet conditionalities, perhaps by some form of deception."

"For Kenya, the AU and UN conventions are useful, though up-until-now easy to pay lip-service to. Far more successful have been the donor interventions that have involved the withholding of funds in the absence of a good governance environment. It was this kind of pressure that forced the reintroduction of multi-party democracy in the mid-1980s and the introduction of anti-corruption measures (including legislation) by the former government in the late 1990s."

"In my opinion the best possible contribution by the donors however is to generate more joint pressure to push the Government of Bangladesh to take action. Certainly since normal checks and balances are insufficiently working also because the parliament is not functioning effectively. At the moment only the WB, being the largest donor, is evidently in the position to be explicitly critical. Other donors are for various reasons not that outspoken."

"Already in the planning stage of development aid the policy dialogue should clearly put stress on AC issues. Clear AC commitment of the supported government and measurable progress should become a pre-condition for continuous donor support."

"The gradual move away from traditional bilateral project support with large investment or purchasing elements to more joint financing of budget and sector support (and specific support of institutions, good governance, anti corruption etc) create new challenges. In a joint financing situation you should agree on criterias for withholding disbursements, or even repayment, with the other donors. You have to balance the objective to clearly react to unacceptable practices with the need for long term predictability for the partner country in their national budget and sector planning. Here we have experienced that donors have different tolerances to corruption before they want to take action."

"The question on the effect if aid agencies would pull out is very hypothetical as this will never happen. I do not know of any country where donors have not returned to the table. Some individual agencies may stop support in a specific sector, for example GTZ stopped its support in the Bangladesh Health Swap. It would be interesting to have a list of examples where this has occurred. It might encourage other donors to follow suit!"

"For technical assistance as provided by GTZ it is not so much about stopping it but about changing its contents. For example GTZ withdrew its support from the forestry sector in Cambodia. This did not change anything in the sector. I think it might have been better to rewrite the project design instead of closing down the project."

"To walk away will serve only to undermine development efforts - to the detriment of the poor. To openly tolerate corruption would be equally as bad and potentially jeopardise the entire development programme of a donor (other donors and partner countries would also fail to take it seriously). Agencies must recognise that corruption is a complicated issue and that there are no quick fixes! A united and coordinated donor effort is also essential to send out the right signals. The donor community must however agree to police each other and not just recipient partners. The World Bank's failure to act on the Lesotho and Uganda dam building projects makes a mockery of its own policies and undermines the efforts of all donors."

"Early efforts by donors after the break up of the Soviet Union to address corruption by focusing on government institutions had largely failed because the donors themselves had failed to apply conditionality in a consistent and coordinated manner. Central Asia is awash with donors who have competing interests (oil exploration, terrorism, etc.), thus making it far too easy to "excuse" corrupt practices."

"DFID, as one of the lead donors in Kenya, has moved away from granting aid conditional on specific anti-corruption actions as part of its overall policy on conditionality. Because AC measures are relatively new and because identifying AC activities as such is difficult as they are often part of other projects donors need to look at the trajectory of change across a range of reforms necessary to reduce corruption over the medium and long-term."

"I mention above the important role development partners can have when it comes to put pressure on the government to deliver in terms of combating corruption and in Kenya this is crucial. However, it is important to take into account the resources available and the capacity of the institutions when putting pressure on government and making loans and grants conditional. Also a long-term commitment from donors is necessary when it comes to supporting anti-corruption reforms since change processes take time."

"DFID has delayed budget support in Ethiopia, but also in Rwanda, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Kenya. Whether this delay will prove a country's seriousness in tackling corruption efforts is questionable and it is likely a back-door entry for conditionality as it certainly undercuts the certainty of predictability and harmonisation of aid, which budget support was supposed to move towards."

"The Cambodian state and the economy as a whole is highly dependant on donor aid. Would there be any change, if there would be a serious chance that donor funds would be considerably reduced due to the lack of willingness to reform? During the last CG meeting in February 2006, the donors pledged more money than Cambodia had requested."

"Now that the PRSP is in place and that national anti-corruption strategies are integrated into it, the donors are making an active effort to coordinate their approaches to support the Governments own efforts. It seems that those donors who have done most to harmonise their country programmes are those who have most readily embraced budget support."

"The increasing trend amongst donors to use more strategic instruments of aid like the DBS, SWAPs affords a significant opportunity to address corruption issues in a more systemic sense rather than on a project specific mode. Project specific corruption mitigation strategies rarely have any serious impact on the extent of corruption in a country with systemic proportions of the problem."

"Donors are in a difficult position. The government maintains that in order to carry out its reforms successfully, donor assistance should now move away from projects and towards budget support and support for large-scale infrastructure projects. Whilst there is logic in this, donors still do not have high enough levels of trust in government financial management processes to go down this road but are reluctant to voice this publicly. Perhaps it is this concern that is providing the greatest hindrance to an effective government-donor relationship. The end result can be to undermine the activities of government or even in setting up a parallel system of government, which ends up competing with the national government. Alternatively, if a donor channels its funding through government (eg through budget support) it runs the risk of funding being diverted to defence or military budgets in times of crisis rather than to intended recipients such as schools or hospitals. General budget support becomes impossible when fiduciary risk levels are high, with high levels of corruption and weak financial accountability systems. In the case of sectoral budget support (SWAps), there may be scope to adjust and even withdraw funding through the use of conditionalities, if budget allocations are re-directed to other spheres, but ultimately such unpredictable funding may destabilise the state. In practice, once donors have allocated funds, they are often unwilling to take it back and reaching a decision on stopping assistance can be difficult to take."

"Does the move by some donors from project based aid to budget support help or hinder anti-corruption initiatives? - Probably we need both instruments because some types of corruption (e.g. bribes for Government procurement) might be best addressed through policy dialogue/conditionality attached to budgetary support whilst other types of corrupt practices such as bribes for registering a small business might best be tackled through specific SME projects."

"This is the dilemma. Should donors concentrate on being accountable to their own population and therefore adopt a minimum risk approach or should they align with partner country systems? How do we channel our funding for development work in fragile states where high corruption levels exist and where it is difficult to align ourselves behind government led reform? I would suggest that the best approach will be somewhere down the middle with pooled budget support as one instrument to allow for greater policy dialogue and leverage on necessary reforms and combine this with other projects concentrating on projects strengthening local accountability processes exerted by civil society, which are, in the long term, the only really sustainable processes in country."

"Donors should concentrate their contribution to the further development and reinforcement of these national systems and avoid "balkanisation" of funding and procedures. Different procedures create space for forms of corruption, which are very difficult to combat; risks lie especially in the lack of skilled staff which is confronted with different flows of funding, different procedures for expenditure and procurement and different forms of reporting. Since officially this is "off budget" funding, Go Rwanda (DBS - recipient, medium corruption levels) does not feel responsible to act in case of corruption. The high transaction costs, the costs of project audits by private companies for projects and programmes, could better be spent to build further capacity within the national systems and processes."

"Under the umbrella of U4 partnership, the donors in Rwanda have worked well together in achieving much needed reforms of PFM system. However, much more work is needed and this requires a greater level of complementarity from the donor community. The Partnership Framework has gone some way to ensure that Rwanda's primary donors adopt a coordinated approach in relation to Budget Support. This has been further strengthened by a decision by the key donors to move to a single and joint annual PFMA evaluation. It is hoped that this will reduce the high transaction costs, ease the administrative burden for the GoR and ultimately help the GoR to manage its reform processes better. Another possible and positive by-product of this enhanced co-ordination is that the donor community will be able to identify where the key risks lie and adopt a harmonised approach to tackling them."

"Our agency [Nordic agency] is a small, or in some countries a medium-sized donor in terms of volume. At the same time, it has the ambition to heavily increase the engagement in pooled SWAPs, but also other pooling arrangements. This has already started. It can't stop me from suspecting that we may finally be brought to something that could be referred to as an "identity crisis" - at least when it comes to our COUNTRY PROGRAMMES (support to national NGOs, research, humanitarian assistance, etc. fall outside these programmes). Why? Well, the question one could raise is how we as an agency will be able to stand up for our policies and values when it more and more becomes just one tiny partner in donor consortiums. When it comes to anti-corruption, how will we be able promote its own anti-corruption policies? Will we be able to mobilise the expertise needed? What base of influence does a 3% or 5% support give - will our views become influential?And, even if being offered the responsibility to chair consultative groups and similar, will we have the logistical strength to assume these responsibilities?" Or, is it simply a question of trade-off, we gain the other advantages with pooling - and drop our voice? And, we shouldn't be sorry for the "lost identity" because it has only value in itself? But what about if we really believe that it has something to offer? I reckon that cooperation and alliances with "like-minded" agencies will be a question of "identity survival" in the future. Many coordination and consulting mechanisms between these are already in place, and they will become more and more important. They could even "share" the same expertise (as exemplified U4)."