USAID Proceeds With Caution in Allocating Billions to Pakistani NGOs

The aid organization has asked for help to improve the management style of Pakistani organizations receiving US taxpayer funds.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


This story first appeared on the ProPublica website.

As the United States prepares to drastically increase civilian aid in Pakistan, the agency in charge has asked for help training the local organizations that will spend that aid money, saying those organizations “do not meet the minimum standards for managing” U.S. government funds.

Last fall, President Obama signed a bill committing $7.5 billion in nonmilitary aid to Pakistan over five years. In December, we reported on the administration’s plan (PDF) to channel much of that money away from American contractors and nongovernmental organizations, directing it instead toward Pakistani organizations. Administration officials defended their approach, saying it would help build stronger Pakistani institutions. But the plan drew warnings from development experts, who questioned whether Pakistan’s history of corruption and lax accounting standards would increase the risk to U.S. taxpayers’ money.

This week, the U.S. Agency for International Development, which oversees the funding, took a stab at answering that question. On Monday, the agency posted a notice (.doc) on Grants.gov, the main Web site for government grants, asking for comments and suggestions on how to train Pakistani organizations, including government ministries, contractors and nongovernmental organizations.

“USAID’s past experience with local institutions indicates that many of these local organizations are faced with institutional capacity issues and overall weaknesses in their internal controls, financial management and absorptive capacity,” reads the notice, leading to “a higher degree of risk and ultimately more audit recommendations.”

According to the notice, USAID will use the comments it receives to help draft a request for applications for its “Assessment and Strengthening Program,” a five-year, $25 million project intended to screen Pakistani organizations and improve the way they operate. The organization that wins the award will be responsible for ensuring that those new policies and procedures are being followed, through what the notice calls “annual compliance validations.”

“The ASP will specifically target those local implementing partners which are considered essential to meeting USAID/Pakistan’s goals and objectives, but do not meet minimum standards for managing USG funds,” says the notice. “The ASP will allow for the provision of the technical assistance required to build their institutional capacity up to USAID standards.”

Charles Tiefer, a professor of government contracting at the University of Baltimore Law School, and a member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan that reports to Congress, said that USAID’s approach in Pakistan is “understandable, but risky.”

“AID is on the horns of a dilemma,” he said. “They don’t have enough local NGOs to help with the large amount of aid that Congress wants Pakistan to have. But by using local NGOs that don’t keep the kind of reliable bookkeeping that AID and its inspector general require, they risk from time to time seeing some of their grant money evaporate without much sign it’s doing what it’s intended to do.”

Jacques Gansler, a professor at the University of Maryland who was undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics under President Clinton, praised USAID’s approach, which he called “on-the-job training” for Pakistani organizations. But he said the success of the program would depend on the willingness of Pakistanis to make their institutions more transparent.

“The challenge is whether the people who are in leadership positions in Pakistan are the kind that are looking for money in their pocket, or money for their country,” Gansler said. “If it’s clearly for the building up of the nation, it’ll work. If it’s trying to say, ‘I’ll take my 10 percent off the top first,’ that’s something that AID has to be very careful of.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate