Select Committee on International Development Eighth Special Report



APPENDIX: THE GOVERNMENT'S RESPONSE TO THE COMMITTEE'S REPORT "DEPARTMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: 2000 DEPARTMENTAL REPORT"

1. DFID's 2000 Departmental Report represents a further significant improvement in DFID's accountability to Parliament. It gives the reader an excellent overview of the policy priorities of the Department, placed clearly in the context of the year covered by the Report. In particular we welcome its analysis of recent policy developments, current debates and important events, and the increased level of detail about the Department's activities over the past year and its plans for future years (paragraph 2).

3.  We preface our discussion on DFID's bilateral country programme expenditure plans with the comment that, both in our scrutiny of DFID's expenditure in this inquiry and more generally in our work during the course of the past year, we have found the provision of figures for planned bilateral country programmes at a country level in the Departmental Report to be an extremely valuable resource. We congratulate DFID on its openness and transparency in this regard (paragraph 11).

DFID notes the Committee's comments.

2.  We welcome the reversal of the decline in UK official development assistance which has taken place during the past two years, and the Government's announcement in the recent Spending Review of an increase in DFID's budget to £3.6 billion in 2003/04, equivalent to 0.33 per cent of UK GNP (paragraph 9).

4.  We welcome the flexibility of DFID's approach to its bilateral country programmes, and its willingness publicly to discuss changes in its plans for individual countries (paragraph 12).

5.  We note that the planned increase in DFID's bilateral country programme in China was not delivered in 1999/2000. We shall monitor with interest, and in the light of the concerns about human rights expressed in our Report on the 1999 Departmental Report, DFID's future expenditure in China (paragraph 16).

DFID notes the Committee's comments but as we have previously made clear our work in China enhances the human rights of poor people.

6.  We welcome the introduction of the new Policy Performance Funds for Africa, Asia and the multilateral development institutions. We look forward to information being provided in future Departmental Reports on how and why the Funds have been allocated between country programmes and institutions. We would welcome further information from DFID on the intended purpose of the International Policy Performance Fund (paragraph 19).

DFID will continue to explain major variations in expenditure over plans.

The International Policy Performance Fund has been created to enable DFID to make additional contributions at short notice to reward multilateral organisations that are improving the effectiveness and efficiency of their performance in contributing towards the achievement of the International Development Targets (IDTs). It is intended to enable DFID to target our resources on those institutions that are likely to have most impact on the IDTs. It will be used to reward improvements in performance and to provide support to help multilateral organisations to press ahead with reform processes that will help to improve the effectiveness of their contribution to the IDTs.

7.  We welcome, and look forward to receiving further details of, the new cross-departmental budget for conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction. We recommend that DFID keep us informed of further details of this budget as they become available, including details, for example, of the mechanisms which will be put in place for administering the budget, the resources allocated to the budget, and how the Departments concerned will account for the expenditure to Parliament (paragraph 20).

In July HM Treasury announced that funds would be allocated for two new cross departmental initiatives on Conflict Prevention: (i) for Africa (to be managed by a Ministerial Committee headed by the Secretary of State for International Development); and (2) for Rest of the World headed by a Ministerial Committee headed by the Foreign Secretary. It also indicated the level of resources to be allocated to each:

Sub­Saharan Africa:
Contributions from Departments (£m) 2001/22002/3 2003/4
DFID23.5 23.523.5
FCO 5.0 5.0 5.0
MoD 1.5 1.5 1.5
Additional Treasury Resources 20.020.0 20.0
Total: (excluding peacekeeping) 50.050.0 50.0
Indicative contributions from Treasury representing currently forecast peacekeeping/minor operations 65.060.0 60.0
The Rest of The World: 2001/22002/3 2003/4
Contributions from Departments MoD 32.032.0 32.0
FCO 7.0 7.0 7.0
DFID 9.0 9.0 9.0
Additional Treasury resources 12.020.0 30.0
Total (excluding peacekeeping/enforcement) 60.068.0 78.0
Indicative contribution from Treasury representing forecast peacekeeping/enforcement /operations expenditure 340.0380.0 380.0

The Cabinet Office has a key role in supporting these processes. The new arrangements will come into effect from FY 2001 for a period of 3 years. However for Africa we will be operating a 'virtual pool' arrangement for this year. This will ensure that all the procedures and arrangements are in place for the Pool to become fully operational at the beginning of the next financial year.

Since July, officials from the concerned Departments have begun to work out the accounting arrangements and procedures for the operation of the Pools. Discussions are currently underway on this and on the prioritisation of issues. A shared Target was included in the Public Service Agreements of the three Departments, which will be translated to more precise indicators in the forthcoming Service Delivery Agreements.

8.  DFID's performance targets, as contained in the Public Service Agreement, fail to meet the Government's own 'SMART' criteria (which specify that targets must be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timed), and they fail to cover the full range of DFID's policies and Departmental Objectives (paragraph 35).

9.  We do not question the value of the International Development Targets, and we congratulate DFID on its work in mobilising support for them among other donors and development partners. Nor do we doubt that in various ways DFID's work is contributing significantly to their achievement. It is our view, however, that measuring DFID's performance as a Department by relating its expenditure at country levels to specific development outcomes in a disparate set of countries is so simplistic as to be uninformative and useless (paragraph 36).

10.  We welcome DFID's commitment to revise its PSA, and we look forward to examining the revised targets (paragraph 37).

11.  We recommend that DFID revise its PSA so as to differentiate between its overall objectives (to contribute to the achievement of the IDTs) and the measurement of the effectiveness of its own programmes and projects (and those of the multilateral development organisations to which it contributes) against comprehensive, clear, specific, measurable and timed targets. The targets should be built on a strong basis of evaluation at project and programme level, the results of which may then be aggregated to show DFID's performance in each of its key policy areas (paragraph 38).

The targets contained in the 1999-2002 Public Service Agreement (PSA) served as an important guide to the work of the Department, in particular their focus on achieving the International Development Targets. Progress against milestones were measured for each target and set out in the 2000 Departmental Report. Milestones were expressed in terms of annual targets, targets for a specific date or based on assumed linear progression towards meeting the International Development Targets by the due date (usually 2015). The PSA targets were framed in sufficiently broad terms to capture a large, yet still incomplete, picture of the work of the Department.

DFID reviewed the appropriateness of these PSA targets as part of the 2000 Spending Review. A new PSA, which sets out DFID's objectives for the period 2001-04, was published in July (Cm 4808). It will shortly be supplemented by a published Service Delivery Agreement and Technical Notes, which will say how DFID intends to deliver its PSA objectives.

The new PSA is along the lines recommended by the Committee. It has been constructed to enable clearer measurement of progress towards the targets, that can be monitored and evaluated regularly. Management systems are being put in place to allow better evaluation of the effectiveness of bilateral programme spend, as well as spend through multilateral institutions.

The new PSA objectives continue to be linked to the International Development Targets but focus on what needs to be achieved during the Spending Review period. It is not the purpose of the new PSA to cover all DFID's activities; rather, it covers the main planks of DFID's work and shows that DFID will direct support where the impact on poverty will be greatest, in partnership with developing country governments and other donors. Responsibility for meeting some of the objectives is shared with other Government Departments.

12.  There is no doubt that there is a large amount of policy analysis information now available, produced by DFID and by others, perhaps most notably the World Bank. Whilst this is welcome, it is not sufficient for DFID to learn from its own successes and failures, and to be held properly to account for its expenditure. A significant investment must also be made in expenditure analysis and evaluation procedures. This is necessary in order to establish the effectiveness of individual programmes and projects in producing the desired outcomes (paragraph 39).

DFID has in place a robust system for management of the project and programme cycle, including analysis and evaluation of expenditure. The design of individual projects and programmes includes financial analysis of planned expenditure and this is reviewed throughout the project or programme cycle, on a proportionate basis. Evaluation studies include systematic assessment of the efficiency and effectiveness of interventions. Further initiatives will be implemented to improve analysis and evaluation of expenditure, including annual reviews of progress and expenditure against objectives established in country and institutional strategy papers and for centrally funded initiatives (e.g. Challenge Funds). Running costs allocations will be based on assessment of performance against targets set out in Departmental Policy and Resource Plans and Service Level Agreements. A rolling programme of efficiency reviews, agreed with Cabinet Office, will be implemented under the Government's 'Better Quality Services' initiative.

13.  In its 1998 and 1999 Departmental Reports, DFID included in each section a table showing information on its expenditure captured by Policy Information Marker System data, which measures expenditure according to key policy areas. In its 2000 Departmental Report, DFID has discontinued this practice. We recommend that in future Departmental Reports, in each section of its report relating to one of its policy objectives, DFID include a table showing relevant Policy Information Marker System, Policy Objective Markers and Poverty Aim Marker data for the past three years. This will provide a clear and readily-accessible picture of DFID's expenditure profile in relation to its objectives (paragraph 41).

The provisional analysis of 1999/2000 bilateral commitments is attached.[1] This data will also be included in the next edition of Statistics on International Development. We will provide the relevant commitment data in respect of our Policy Information, Policy Objective and Poverty Aim Markers in the 2001 Departmental Report. We are not yet in a position to provide full details of expenditure data, but are in the process of remarking projects so that this information will be available in future.

14.  DFID's project completion report forms have been revised recently to capture more information about lessons learned from successes and failures, and we look forward to this information being available on an annual basis in future project completion report synthesis studies. This will represent a significant improvement in their value as tools for learning lessons and applying them in future projects and programmes. We recommend that, in each section of future Departmental Reports, tables be included showing the success of projects in each policy area in reaching their objectives (as reported in the most recent project completion report synthesis study), along with a summary of the key lessons which have been learned (paragraph 43).

Our Project Completion Report Synthesis Study warned that breaking down the data from project completion reports by sector means that for a number of sectors, the sample size is very small, and that consequently 'the findings could well be misleading and unrepresentative in some respects' (EV 619 1998: paragraph 23). By definition Project Completion Reports are also historical. Introduction throughout DFID of the new project information database (PRISM) will however improve our ability to report on the success of projects. We will draw on all the available data in future Departmental Reports.

15.  The Project Completion Reports alone do not present a comprehensive picture of DFID's performance. They must be supported by evaluation studies which are independent, published, are conducted after the completion of projects and programmes, and which measure the broader and longer-term impact of projects and programmes, and their contribution to poverty eradication (paragraph 44).

16.  We recommend that DFID revise its publications catalogue to include evaluation studies, and that it update its Internet site to include all evaluation studies on a regular basis. This will enable other organisations outside DFID to benefit from the studies more easily (paragraph 48).

DFID will regularly update its Internet site to include newly published evaluation studies. The publications catalogue does not refer to many of our specialist publications. It would become too bulky if it did so.

17.  We are sure that DFID's in-house Project Completion Reports are compiled in good faith. Nevertheless we would interpret cautiously an evaluation portfolio which consisted almost entirely of self-assessment, without any supplementary independent evaluations. At the very least, there is an undeniable value in obtaining a second expert opinion on the strengths and weaknesses of a project or programme and the nature and extent of its impact, and on the lessons which may be drawn for future work. We recommend that DFID significantly increase the proportion of its projects and programmes that are subjected to evaluation studies. We recommend that DFID publish an evaluation strategy and invite suggestions from its staff and from the development community on projects and programmes which might usefully be independently reviewed. The strategy should include all aspects of its work, including budgetary support and sector wide adjustment programmes (SWAPs) (paragraph 50).

18.  We look forward to the establishment of the new Development and Impact Resource Centre, and request that DFID keep us informed of progress in its work (paragraph 51).

All performance assessment systems, including those in DFID, should strike a balance between performance assessment for accountability and performance assessment for lesson learning.

Self-evaluation is a valuable tool for rapid lesson learning and helps to ensure quick application of lessons learned by those undertaking the evaluations. Sharing the lessons in a timely and effective way within DFID, and with other governments and development organisations, is an important part of the performance assessment system, going beyond the formal evaluation process. Independent evaluation plays a key role in terms of auditing the quality and usefulness of (project-level) self-evaluations. We expect such independent validation to continue to be an aspect of our sectoral and thematic synthesis studies, and in the country programme evaluations we plan to undertake. Country programme evaluation will extend the proportion of DFID's portfolio subject to systematic assessment.

DFID's Evaluation Department is currently reviewing its future Programmes, and will be consulting internally and externally about it. We will publish more information about our evaluation strategies and findings in future Departmental Reports. The report will also provide information of the work of the planned Resource Centre (now titled the Performance Assessment Resource Centre - PARC).

19.  DFID publishes a large range of policy analysis documents, strategy papers, and evaluation studies. It has in place good evaluation systems, and has been working to improve them. All this we welcome. There is a gap, however, between these qualitative assessments of DFID's role and performance, and the need to provide summary quantitative information about the overall performance of the Department against clear and meaningful targets. We recommend that DFID produce a set of revised departmental targets, based on the results of its Project Completion Reports and Evaluation Studies, disaggregated according to its objectives and expenditure profile (paragraph 52).

The DFID Public Service Agreement and Service Delivery Agreement provide a set of clear operational targets, disaggregated by departmental objectives. Reporting against them will require use of a wide range of performance information, including findings from Project Completion Reports and Evaluation Studies.

20.  BOND welcomed the new Civil Society Challenge Fund in written evidence as a move which reflected "exciting new strategic priorities for DFID's funding of civil society organisations and [which] could offer significant benefits to the world's poor people".[139] We agree. We welcome the establishment of the Civil Society Challenge Fund as a special fund which has a remit to strengthen civil society in developing countries. We consider this an important element in DFID's overall programme (paragraph 56).

21.  Given the priority themes for 2001/2002 funding under the Civil Society Challenge Fund, we recommend that DFID substantially expand its traditional NGO list so as to include more trade unions, labour organisations, local government organisations, private sector interests, and southern-based NGOs (paragraph 57).

Ensuring the participation of a broad representation of UK civil society groups in the Civil Society Challenge Fund (CSCF) - as in other parts of DFID's work - is a priority. Progress is being made, particularly with trade unions. Profit-making organisations are excluded from the CSCF, but DFID involves the private sector in its work, either through participation in other schemes (e.g. the Enterprise Development Innovations Fund) and its country programmes overseas. It is not feasible to provide funding directly from the UK to Southern-based groups, because of issues of accountability, but all CSCF projects must include Southern-based partners. Southern-based groups, including NGOs, are supported from country and regional programmes where appropriate, at an aggregate level which considerably exceeds that available in the CSCF.

22.  We invite DFID, in the light of the allocation of funds in the 2000 Spending Review, to comment on future levels of funding for the Civil Society Challenge Fund, taking into account the increased competition for funds resulting from the amalgamation of three channels of funding into one and of DFID's attempts to attract new partners. We further recommend that DFID, as suggested by BOND, maintain records of sound projects which are not awarded funds as a result of lack of available resources, in order that a possible case for increasing the volume of resources available through the Civil Society Challenge Fund may be properly assessed (paragraph 58).

Funding for the CSCF is reviewed annually, as part of DFID's spending round. DFID recognises that the level may need to increase if participation in the Fund is as strong as intended. Funding is not at present a limiting factor for good projects.

23.  We consider the assertion that "the world has changed" and it is no longer difficult for specialist NGOs to raise funds for sexual and reproductive health projects to be a naive and incorrect one. It is our view that there continues to be a strong case for the provision of 100 per cent funding for innovative or catalytic projects in this field. It may well be the case that the new Civil Society Challenge Fund is not an appropriate instrument for such funding, and we are reassured by the fact that there are other channels through which it may be obtained. We request that in its response to this Report, DFID provide details of the level of funding available through these additional channels, what is the process for applying for funds, and by what criteria they are allocated. Overall, we would not wish at this stage to see a net reduction in the levels of resources available for non-governmental sexual and reproductive health projects (paragraph 61).

The promotion of better reproductive health care continues to be a key objective for DFID. In financial terms our commitment has more than doubled since the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development - from £32m in 1993, to over £80m in 1999.

In the last two years, DFID has provided funding of over £46 million from its bilateral country programmes to NGO sexual and reproductive health projects - both UK-based and indigenous NGOs. Most of these projects are fully funded as part of the country programme's wider health strategy, with the remainder co-funded, usually with other donors. The NGOs were either selected in competition with others, or because DFID was responding to specific proposals put forward by NGOs themselves.

DFID - Tanzania is developing a £2.4 million funding scheme for civil society groups, which will be open to organisations interested in advocacy work on sexual and reproductive health issues. Zimbabwe, China and Russia will soon benefit from new sexual and reproductive health initiatives, collectively worth £35.5 million, which will involve NGO participation.

24.  We recommend that DFID conduct and publish an early analysis of the difficulties in raising funds for sexual and reproductive health projects compared to projects relating to other policy areas, and that, on the basis of that analysis, DFID review its funding mechanisms for NGOs running such projects. More generally, it would be wrong for the funding mechanism to have as a result that support is skewed to causes which find it easier to raise funds from the public. We look forward to learning from DFID how it intends to prevent such distortions and ensure that its development objectives are met (paragraph 62).

DFID has just completed the first CSCF decision round, so it is too early, and the sample too small, to draw clear conclusions. Sexual and reproductive health organisations will continue to get preferential access to the fund until 2002/03, when 50% funding will take effect.

Overall, DFID expenditure on sexual and reproductive health is continuing to grow in recognition of its position as a key international development target. Developing countries are benefiting through DFID's strategic approach which builds on national programmes and initiatives where all partners — including NGOs and the private sector — can play important roles.

25.  We recommend that DFID provide details of other funding channels which may be used by NGOs which have received funding under the CSCF for a project, and wish to apply for further funds to continue the project (paragraph 63).

DFID (Civil Society Department) regularly informs groups about non-DFID funding channels, such as the National Lottery Charities Board, Comic Relief and the European Union (Co-financing Scheme).

We will share information about successful CSCF projects with other parts of DFID and will encourage these organisations to approach in-country donors, including DFID, as CSCF projects come to an end. If CSCF projects are successful in terms of scaling up, they should be promoting the lessons learnt with governments and donors in-country as early as possible.

26.  We welcome DFID's review of its contracting procedures, and we trust that our comments will assist DFID in identifying areas which could usefully be examined as part of the review (paragraph 66).

27.  We accept DFID's argument that there are some short-term or highly specialised contracts where open advertising would not be cost-effective or productive, since there are only a small number of consultants with the relevant skills or the timescale makes it impossible. It is unfortunate, however, that some contracts are let non-competitively simply because of their comparatively low value. We recommend that DFID increase the proportion of its smaller contracts which are let competitively. We suggest that DFID consider ways of disseminating information about contracts, and inviting expressions of interest from consultants, in cost-effective ways, such as via its Internet page, and through open days for consultants, regular bulletins, and networking organisations such as the British Consultants' Bureau. More generally, we recommend that DFID significantly increase the amount of information on forthcoming competitions for contracts on its website, and that the website be updated on a more regular basis. Outdated information is of little use (paragraph 75).

DFID seeks to achieve Value for Money by awarding contracts through competition. It is often the case that competition is not deemed to represent value for money in small value contracts because the additional cost of running a competition would outweigh the benefits. This approach is consistent with Government procurement policy.

We are already looking at ways of improving the spread of information about DFID contracts e.g. we will place copies of advertisements for DFID contracts on the Internet.

28.  The comments made by British Consultants' Bureau and International Family Health in written evidence lead us to question the adequacy of the mechanisms DFID currently has in place to ensure fair and effective decisions are made on the selection of contractors. We recommend that in its review of procurement, DFID include consideration of how its selection procedures might be improved so as to remove the perception that its rules are not always applied fairly, consistently or transparently (paragraph 79).

We believe we have come a long way in ensuring our procurement systems and procedures are open and transparent and will take account of the Committee's comments in developing further improvements. We intend to publish on the Internet what bidders can expect of DFID.

29.  It appears that DFID does allow contractors involved in the design of a project to bid for future contracts for the implementation of the same project. We recommend that in its response to this Report DFID confirm that this is the case, and provide details of what mechanisms are in place to prevent consultants from designing projects which only they can implement (paragraph 81).

In some cases it has been appropriate for those involved in the project design to be allowed to bid for the implementation phase. DFID is very careful at all stages in the process to ensure that projects are designed objectively to allow fair and open competition.

30.  We recommend that DFID review the information it provides to consultants bidding for contracts so as to ensure that they are furnished with all the necessary information about the project (paragraph 82).

We accept the need to provide bidders with clear, timely and complete information.

31.  We are puzzled as to why DFID took the decision to embark on a resource centre agreement with John Snow International, despite its failure to meet all the criteria for inclusion on DFID's Consultants' Index. We recommend that DFID provide us with a full account of the circumstances under which approval may be given for consultants to be hired who do not meet the eligibility criteria (paragraph 89).

The circumstances are explained in our previous memorandum (page 94 of the Committee's Report). John Snow International met all the relevant criteria for the contract it was awarded, and was not singled out for special treatment.

32.  We welcome the work DFID has done to seek a multilateral agreement on aid untying. We also welcome the recent communiqué from the leaders of the G8 countries, which contained a commitment to an agreement to untie aid to the least developed countries, and look forward to further progress being made in negotiations at the OECD (paragraph 96).

We note the Committee's comments and share their hopes for further progress.

33.  We welcome the steps taken so far to decentralise DFID's procurement capacity, and we consider this to be an essential step towards increasing its use of local consultants, with the potential result of achieving a much greater and more sustainable development impact (paragraph 97).

34.  We welcome the work that has taken place to increase the proportion of contracts which are let locally in those countries where DFID has been piloting new initiatives and building its procurement capacity. We also welcome the overall increase from two to six per cent of contracts which are let to local consultants (paragraph 99).

We note the Committee's comments.

35.  We recommend that DFID give consideration to ActionAid's proposal for larger contracts which would normally be let to UK-based consultants to be broken down into smaller contracts and let locally instead (paragraph 102).

Where DFID can obtain better value for money — for example more appropriate services — by breaking activities down into smaller contracts, we shall do this.

36.  We invite DFID to comment upon the potential use of targeted procurement in developing countries (paragraph 103).

There is evidence (for example from Canadian studies) that targeted procurement is not always effective in achieving its aim and can detract from value for money. DFID is confident that local suppliers are in most cases capable of winning business on their own merits.

37.  Technical co-operation represents a large portion (43 per cent in 1998 of DFID's bilateral oda. This portion of the programme must be fully incorporated into DFID's evaluation strategy (paragraph 104).

 As the Departmental Report (Figure 5, page 154) explains, Technical Cooperation is a general description which includes a variety of different forms of aid. They are examined, where appropriate, in DFID's project and programme evaluation studies.

38.  We recommend that, in addition to individual project appraisals, DFID periodically review the performance of each of its resource centres (paragraph 105).

We will regularly review the performance of consultants including resource centres.

39.  We welcome DFID's pilot of outputs-based contracts, and we look forward to examining the results, and any proposals for changes in consultancy contracting procedures, in due course (paragraph 106).

We will keep the Committee informed.

40.  We are not satisfied by the responses we received from DFID when we put to its officials our perception that there was a widespread fear among contractors of complaining about any aspect of its work. We are reassured to some extent by DFID's admission that it perhaps needed to work to obtain better feedback from its contractors, but we are alarmed rather than comforted by the implausibly low number of complaints dealt with by the complaints officer (paragraph 111).

We agree that full informal dialogue between DFID and its contractors is vital for good procurement. Meetings are currently being organised to obtain more feedback from consultants.

41.  We recommend that in reviewing its procurement procedures, DFID actively seek out constructive comments from consultants about the matters we have discussed in this Report, paying particular attention to their views on how complaints procedures might be amended to dispel the fear of complaining which currently prevails and to encourage constructive criticisms which might improve the Department's work (paragraph 112).

We will include discussion of the complaints procedures in the meetings mentioned above.

42.  We recommend that DFID include in its contracting procedures a check to establish whether potential contractors appear on the World Bank's list of companies debarred from funds as a result of corruption. Such companies should not be awarded contracts by DFID. We recommend that DFID review the potential for co-operation with other donors on this matter, and inform us of the outcome of its deliberations as soon as they are available (paragraph 114).

We are considering how to make more effective co-operation with other donors as part of the international fight against corruption.

More detail is provided in the memorandum on fighting corruption submitted to the Committee in response to its current enquiry.

43.  We invite DFID to comment upon the possibility of adapting the DETR and HM Treasury guidelines on ethical purchasing to its consultancy procurement procedures (paragraph 116).

We work continuously to ensure DFID procedures are in line with OGC guidelines provided to all Departments by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC).

44.  We accept that DFID should use consultants to implement some of its programmes. During this inquiry, however, we have found that DFID's procedures require improvement. In particular, there are concerns about the selection of contractors, the ability and willingness of contractors to make complaints to DFID in confidence, and appropriate safeguards against corruption. We look forward to the outcome of the current review, and trust that it will heed our recommendations (paragraph 117).

We note the Committees comments and will bear them in mind as we work to improve DFID's procurement processes.

Department for International Development

October 2000


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