1. Donor Coordination in Technical Assistance
Discussion Points
The views expressed herein are those of the author and should not be attributed to the IMF, its Executive Board, or its management.

2. Outline What are the main challenges? What are the lessons learned?
Looking forward – what could be improved?

3. Current Situation Statistical office of country X
Staff, financial and IT resources are not commensurate with the requirements for producing good quality statistics
Shortage of staff, high staff turnover
Lack of staff trained in particular techniques
Insufficient budget for surveys, IT infrastructure, etc.

4. Current Situation Statistical Office of Country X
Relies on donor help for financing surveys
Relies on donor assistance for IT infrastructure
Needs donor assistance to implement methodology
Needs training in statistical methodologies for staff

5. Donor Assistance in Statistics
Statistical Offices of EU candidate and potential candidate countries
EU, EFTA, World bank, IMF, DFID, SIDA, UNDP, etc.
CIS countries
all above plus ADB, CIS committee, EFTA, UNECE, etc.
Africa
all above plus ECA, AFRISTAT, many others

6. Donor Assistance Challenges
Donors have their own strategic interests and priorities
Are these in line with country priorities?
Ownership of countries?
Donor funding administration
Focus on inputs instead of outputs
Focus on documents instead of processes
Analysis and feedback into planning process still weak
More administrative demands imposed on recipient governments

7. Donor Assistance Challenges
Limited coordination activities
Duplication of work
Cross-purposes (conflicting advise)
Not appropriate phasing of project inputs
Uncoordinated modes of delivery
Small scale projects instead of large scale projects
Overloading recipient country administrative system
Problem with absorbing capacity

8. Lessons Learned Prioritization and planning
Coordination should start early, with the planning process
Priorities should be agreed between donors and with the recipients
Ownership of recipient institutions
Phasing of inputs in accordance with countries capacities
Planning based on outputs and not on inputs
Multi-donor funding for large scale projects
Leadership

9. Lessons Learned Implementation of TA projects
Coordinated delivery of TA
Regional approach - technical assistance centers
Africa – 4 (plus one more in 2013), Caribbean, Pacific Islands, Central America, Middle East
Multi-donor funding, Steering Committee
In each center, there is a project on economic statistics (national accounts and prices, GFS, BOP)
Topical trust funds

10. Lessons Learned Implementation capacity of the recipient institution
Strong implementation capacity – strong ownership, effective management, right balance between project areas and modalities
Weak implementation capacity – risk of short-term and unsustainable results
Requires long-term commitments/projects
Multi-donor funding for exhaustive surveys
Resource flexibility
Resident experts instead of short-term missions

11. Looking Forward Avoid duplication of donor projects – is it possible?
Dissemination of more information among donors – how efficient it is? and how much information?
Mechanism for donor coordination – what it should be?
Among donors or done by the recipient institution (i.e., the statistical office)?
Avoid conflicting advise – choice of experts?
Using same experts for different donor projects?
Multi-donor projects for statistics in Europe or a regional technical assistance center – how feasible?