LONDON, (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Britain spent an unexpected one billion pounds on overseas aid in two months to meet a government spending target, raising questions of how effectively the money was spent at short notice, a report said yesterday.
The National Audit Office said the government’s outlay at the end of 2013 risked putting staff at the Department for International Development under pressure to allocate money, but aid officials said it went only where it was most needed.
The government hit an internationally agreed target to spend 0.7 percent of Britain’s national income, 11.4 billion pounds ($17.27 billion), on development aid in 2013.
The watchdog said the government increased DFID’s 2013-14 budget by a third compared to the previous year, at a time when it was cutting the budgets of most other departments, to meet the target.
It said DFID faced the challenge of having to work to two year-ends, as the target is based on the calendar year while the department’s financial year ends in March.
“This difference is likely to represent more than an accounting difficulty because of the need to hit a target with little or no flexibility, causing significant decisions to be made late in the year and at short notice,” the report said.
To achieve the target, DFID staff had to quickly add activities to its plan, but could only choose those where funds could be paid out during 2013, which made it more difficult to achieve value for money, the National Audit Office said.
“It may therefore have missed opportunities to get the best outcomes from this spending.”
However, the report found that DFID reviewed its aid programmes and ways in which it measured the benefits of aid and expanded its workforce to deal with the increased budget.
A DFID spokesman said the department had the flexibility to react to changing priorities and humanitarian emergencies in any year.
The department used the additional funds to increase urgent humanitarian support, particularly in Syria and the Philippines, and to provide additional funding to the World Bank and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, he said.
“UK aid goes only where it is most needed and where it will deliver the very best results for taxpayers’ money.” ($1 = 0.6603 pounds)
