| |
| |
 |
After
more than a decade of being net recipients of financial aid, Central and
Eastern Europe countries such as the Czech Republic are beginning to pitch
in as international donors. — By Roman Vyhnanek
But in recent years, this situation has been changing. With some countries in the region having already joined the OECD and eight soon to join the European Union, they are now expected to develop their foreign-aid programmes. The Czech Republic, for one, has had a foreign aid programme since 1996, making it a regional pioneer as a donor country. This is one way the former Soviet satellite has demonstrated its aspiration to belong to the West. Foreign aid projects are approved by the Czech government once a year in the form of a list presented by the minister of foreign affairs. Projects themselves are proposed by individual companies and organisations who send in letters of interest signed by local partners and the governments of recipient countries or territories. Packages of projects are submitted to the foreign ministry by those ministries that will take ultimate responsibility for the projects. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the help of the Development Centre of the Institute of International Relations and its experts, then evaluates the projects in consultation with its embassies in the recipient countries. The Czech government earmarked foreign development aid of EUR 11 million in 2001, EUR 7 million in 2002, and EUR 12.5 million in 2003. Of this, CZK 12 million (EUR 375,000) was dedicated to bilateral development aid and the rest for multilateral development aid and project monitoring and coordination. The government anticipates increasing foreign aid to EUR 16.5 million in 2004 and EUR 20 million in 2005. According to the 2002-2007 Czech foreign aid programme, official development assistance over the period will come to EUR 51.6 million, contributions to international organisations will be EUR 12.9 million, and the Czech contribution to the European Development Fund will be EUR 20 million. (With official development assistance forecast at just 0.108 percent of Czech GDP in 2007, the country will satisfy just one-seventh of the goal it set at the International Conference on Financing for Development in 2002.) Bi-lateral and multi-lateral foreign aid projects in 2003 have been chiefly targeted at Asia (27 percent). Some 10 percent is going to the Balkans and 8 percent to Eastern Europe. Another 28 percent will go to scholarships to Czech universities and 10 percent toward projects run in more than one country. Mongolia, which stands to receive EUR 1.1 million of Czech aid, is the single largest recipient country and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which will get more than EUR 0.3 million, falls closely behind. Priority sectors break down as follows: Some 32.4 percent has been earmarked for 23 projects run by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, 30.5 percent is reserved for education (including a scholarship programme for students from developing countries), 12.7 percent for 25 projects coordinated by the Ministry of Environment, and 7 percent for five agricultural projects. By another breakdown, the total aimed at environmental problems -- including that dealing with access to water and natural resources -- is EUR 4 million, or 31.5 percent. These projects fall under the purview of four guarantor ministries. Bilateral development aid is and will be the main form of Czech foreign aid. This type of aid concentrates on longer-term projects in cooperation with a restricted number of partner countries. South Eastern Europe -- specifically Bosnia and Herzegovina, FYR Macedonia and Serbia and Montenegro -- is one priority region. The aims of development assistance there are good governance, prevention of migration, infrastructure developments in energy production and transport, environmental protection and regional cooperation. However, critics complain that the project structure of Czech aid handicaps non-governmental development organisations because it allows too little for operational costs. This is one of many constraints that hinder Czech development co-operation, said Jan Plesinger, chairman of the Czech Forum for Development Cooperation -- an umbrella group for non--governmental development organisations. The system of project approval is unnecessarily complicated, he said. Czech official development assistance is is just 0.065 percent of GDP and only 21 percent of the total aid is dedicated to bilateral projects, Plesinger added. A typical project guaranteed by the Ministry of Environment is related to cleaner production. The establishment of cleaner production centres in Croatia and Macedonia, and recent activities in other countries have helped build up an impressive portfolio for experts from the Czech Cleaner Production Center www.cpc.cz. A project related to industrial ecology is being carried out by the Czech Environment Management Center www.cemc.cz called Building Local Capacities in Eco-management. The project is run directly by project partners in selected countries (Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, and Ukraine)with coaching from Czech experts. A smaller project proposed by the REC country office in Prague will support World Bank and United Nations Environment Programme activities in strategic environmental assessment Sub-Saharan Africa. Project partners are from South Africa. REC's Czech country office has two other projects on a waiting list, both oriented toward the Balkans. —
Roman Vyhnanek is an environmental |
 |
|||||||||
      |
|||
|
