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5.e What is the OperationalGuide (OG) and how does it work?
At the Kabul Conference in July 2010, the Government of Afghanistan (GoA) formally presented the “Operational Guide to Off-Budget Development Financing” (‘OG’) to the international community. The OG is a document that seeks to improve aid effectiveness by outlining the principles and criteria that international Development Partners (DPs) should follow, when financing off-budget development projects above USD 5m, in partnership with Afghan public entities. International DPs agreed in principle to its policy recommendations, but recommended the creation of an implementation mechanism to translate its policy into action.
The OG is broadly based on the Paris Declaration (2005) and the Accra Agenda for Action (2008), which over 100 international actors have endorsed as key principles or actions that DPs aim to follow in disbursing international aid. In order to firmly ground international aid on the above commitments and principles for partnership in the area of ODA, the Afghan Government decided at the London Conference in January 2010 to formulate the OG in order to make off-budget development aid more effective.
The OG expands on the 5 key Paris Declaration Principles by adding 2 country-specific principles into an official plan with a total of 7 principles and 14 indicators. It aims to implement existing policy into concrete actions of GoA and its international donors. The importance of the OG, therefore, lies in its role to concretely realize, in cooperation with the development partners, the principles outlined in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, within the specific area of off-budget financed projects. The ultimate goal of this plan is for MoF to improve the effectiveness of off-budget financing, in line with international principles, by engaging both DPs and GoA more in the process of aligning it to Afghan priorities. However the implementation plan addresses not only donors, but also Afghan stakeholders such as GoA. GoA’s responsibilities include conducting Peer Reviews – in accordance with its Aid Management Policy for projects above USD 5m – and also certification of off-budget projects, as well as addressing OG-related training and information-sharing needs. Ultimately it is MOF and Line Ministries that have to implement, communicate and verify the OG process.
The objectives of the OG are
a) to better align off-budget financing to national priorities, thus increasing aid effectiveness
b) to increase the quality of aid through increasing GoA and DP partnership,
c) to increase the aid management capacity of GoA (both MoF and also Line Ministries),
d) in particular in program design and tracking aid effectiveness.