The World Bank's newest country-systems policy, adopted in 2008, allows borrowers to use their national systems to conduct procurement and manage finances for Bank-funded projects. In principle, it will incentivise institutional reform, increase local ownership, and facilitate donor harmonisation. In practice, its content and the handling of stakeholder input seem to indicate that the Bank's dominant desire has been to preserve its market share. This article demonstrates (i) how deficiencies in the policy may reverse the Bank's work on governance and undercut aid efficiency, and (ii) how its handling of public consultations on the policy ignored the Bank's best practices. It concludes with steps for improving the policy, including re-opening dialogue with key stakeholders. Copyright (c) The Authors 2009. Journal compilation (c) 2009 Overseas Development Institute..
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.