Issues Relating to Funding Statistical Development at the Country Level

1. Issues Relating to Funding Statistical Development at the Country Level 19 February 2011 – New York

2. Current trends in funding statistical developmentMain challengesResponding to those challenges Outline of Presentation

3. Impact of the Financial Crisis Current Trends in Funding Statistical Development Figure: Comparison of Global Estimated Commitments over Past Three PRESS Rounds However …

4. Impact of the Financial Crisis Current Trends in Funding Statistical Development Furthermore …

5. Impact of the Financial Crisis Current Trends in Funding Statistical Development Share of commitments to statistics in the total ODA Period Covered by PRESS Rounds

6. Aid Concentration Current Trends in Funding Statistical Development Table: Estimated Commitments to Main Recipient Countries, 2008–10 Commitments to these 15 countries combined to equal 45% of total estimated commitments worldwide and 48% of total country-specific commitments.

7. Current Trends in Funding Statistical Development Aid Fragmentation (too little aid from too many donors) • Four types of aid relationships: • Concentrated and important: The donor gives more aid to the recipient country than its global share of aid would suggest and is among the donors that combine to account for at least 90% of the recipient country’s aid. • Concentrated: The donor gives more aid to the recipient country than its global share of aid would suggest but it is nevertheless among the donors that combine to account for less than 10% of the recipient country’s aid. • Important: The donor gives less aid to the recipient country than its global share of aid would suggest but is among the donors that combine to account for at least 90% of the recipient country’s aid. • Non-significant: The donor gives less aid to the recipient country than its global share of aid would suggest and is among the donors that combine to account for less than 10% of the recipient country’s aid.

8. Current Trends in Funding Statistical Development Aid Fragmentation (too little aid from too many donors) 37.5% of aid relationships among top 15 recipients were “non-significant”. These relationships represented 4.0% of aid to statistics to these countries. This means that more than more than one-third (1/3) of aid relationships accounted for one-twenty-fifth (1/25) of financial aid to statistics.

9. Current Trends in Funding Statistical Development Aid Alignment with NSDS Only 19% of projects reported in the PRESS responded to the alignment question. These figures use total global commitments as their denominator. NB: To appreciate these figures, it is important to recognise the percentage of countries that are either implementing or designing an NSDS: 91% of PRESS countries in Africa, 74% in Asia, 69% in LAC, and 100% in Europe.

10. Main Challenges

11. It is not business as usual!! With limited financial & other resources, the NSOs are going to find the operating environment to be very challenging. • The Head of the NSO will have to be: • a leader who will direct the operations into new areas – previously uncharted waters • A good manager – to manage scarce & limited resources to get maximum returns • A good communicator – in order to expand his/her relationships and contacts • Some old traditions should be reviewed – it may become necessary to separate the managerial/leadership functions from the technical aspects of the CEO’s job function. The Impact of the Economic Downturn on the Delivery of Official StatisticsSTATISTICAL INSTITUTE OF JAMAICA -- July 2009

12. Main Challenges • Fragility (sociopolitical, financial, environmental, etc.) • Low Profile of Statistics • Quality of NSDSs • Low capacity to mobilise and co-ordinate funds

13. Facing the Challenges

14. NSDS Quality Assessment FrameworkEvaluations: Quality assessment & relevance of strategies- African Development Bank- CENTROESTAD – Central America- World Bank / PARIS21 Study on Costing NSDSs Updating NSDS Guidelines Quality of NSDSs

15. Strengthening Local Capacities To Mobilise Funds • National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS) • strategy for strengthening statistical capacity across the entire NSS • framework for mobilising, harnessing, and leveraging national and international resources • Country Report on Support to Statistics (CRESS) • inventory of all support, both from external partners and from domestic resources, to the NSS • Useful starting point from which NSDS designers, NSS managers, and donors can begin a dialogue on identifying priority areas for technical and financial support

16. Strengthening Local Capacities To Mobilise Funds • Advocacy • Means to convince policy-makers, civil society, media, NGOs and representatives of multilateral and bilateral agencies in developing countries of the importance of statistics in the wider context of development • National Partnerships • alliance of local governments, other stakeholders and donors at country level • means for providing co-ordinated support to implement agreed NSDSs and reduce reporting burden on recipient countries

17. It is not business as usual!! With limited financial & other resources, the NSOs are going to find the operating environment to be very challenging. • The Head of the NSO will have to be: • a leader who will direct the operations into new areas – previously uncharted waters • A good manager – to manage scarce & limited resources to get maximum returns • A good communicator – in order to expand his/her relationships and contacts • Some old traditions should be reviewed – it may become necessary to separate the managerial/leadership functions from the technical aspects of the CEO’s job function. The Impact of the Economic Downturn on the Delivery of Official StatisticsSTATISTICAL INSTITUTE OF JAMAICA -- July 2009

18. A final question: Are regional and international programmes experiencing similar issues in obtaining funding?

19. Thank you