TNAG-0597-FCO40-744-Future-of-Dependent-Territories-territorial-studies-1977 — Page 34

M. Boughie, JIEN

Thank

you

Y.

(HKGD)

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33351 For your Siles. Kathe Kranz

much- Finance Jeff. 29/4

48

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mrining's mather

Mr Stratton

comprised

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COUNTRY POLICY PAPERS AND QUARTERLY REPORTS Now P/A

1.

Mr Jasper has asked us to supply you with comments on Mr Fogarty's minutes and attached papers.

2. We are not familiar with the system of Quarterly Reports and therefore offer no opinion.

3. Our familiarity with Country Policy Papers, on the other hand, is extensive, and we have a number of ingrained prejudices on the subject, most of which are by now well-known in the Joint Division and in the upper reaches of the ODM. For the last two years we have argued, with total lack of success, that Country Policy papers fail as management tools because they dwell too much on problem analysis and on policy prescriptions while giving scarcely any attention to the specific ways in which aid resources should be used to reach selected policy goals. On this point at least there is much common ground between us and Mr Bridger (indeed we think he may have got the idea from us in the first place).

4. The difficulty we have with Mr Bridger's new model is that it errs too much in the other direction, ie it is weak on policy and strong on management. We came to the conclusion some time ago that these objectives could not be satisfactorily reconciled in a single paper; and we therefore became advocates of an arrangement involving an Aid Policy Paper, with an horizon of at least three years, plus an Aid Management Review, with a time-scale of twelve months. The relevant arguments are set out in my minute of 31 January to Mr Douglas Williams, a copy of which I attach, together with subsequent minutes by Mr Williams and Mr Lynch.

15.

Important gaps in Mr Bridger's format are references to the recipent country's development strategy, to the role of other donors and to our own past performance in the aid field. If those omissions were repaired we would agree (while retaining a preference for the DTEU formulation) that the Bridger model was an improvement on the present format.

6.

You might care to enquire how any decision to alter the CPP system would fit in with the Management Review proposed for the ODM: it should logically be subsumed in the larger process.

25 November 1977

cc:

Mr Duff

Mr Snodgrass

Anthony Beau

Anthony Beattie

DTEU

нка 025/1

RECEIVED TO

Y NO. 51

30 NOV 1977

DESK OFFICER

INDEX

PA

REGISTRY

Action Taken

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