Global Policy Forum

By Queeneth Opara

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has recommended more investments in agriculture and rural roads improvement, arguing that such investments would benefit all the citizens of the country, the rich and the poor alike.

Such investments in agriculture, would, increase national food self- sufficiency and guarantee the desired food security while investments in rural roads would enhance access to food-growing areas to facilitate the production and marketing of farm produce. Invariably, minimised cost of transporting farm inputs to the farming centres and easy consignment of produce to consuming centres would bring down food prices as close to the farmgate prices as possible.

In the same vein, the UN agency argued that governments have great difficulty reporting how much funding goes to poverty reduction programmes, and that for most of the assessments of national poverty alleviation programmes, no reliable statistics could be produced for the funding.

One reason adduced was that poverty is, by its nature, cross- sectoral. As such, it is difficult to draw the line between activities that are relevant to poverty alleviation and those which are not.

In its recent analyses of various poverty alleviation programmes around the world, excluding the Obasanjo regime's newly-introduced programme in Nigeria, the UN agency concluded that in place of reliable estimates of funds channelled into the programmes, some governments pointed at information on expenditures allocated to such sectoral interventions as basic social services.

It further asserted that such sectoral allocations merely bring confusion to the targeting of funds to the poor with the type of intervention employed to do so.

According to it, many different government programmes could be considered pro-poor if most of their benefits reach poor households comprising the urban poor in slums, rural farmers and fishermen.

It noted that the standard of measurement should be based on who benefits and not on the type or nomenclature of the programme, advising that it makes sense to direct financing through a special poverty reduction fund if the programme it finances is designed to disproportionately benefit the poor.

UNDP observed that allocating money to such a fund would have several advantages. But it noted, on the contrary, that the fund would need to be administered by a government body that not only has authority and influence, but also which can ensure accountability and transparency in the use of the funds. Indeed, it pointed out that one advantage of such a fund is that it can lead to a better general accounting as financing dispensed for poverty alleviation. By so doing, different government agencies, especially those in charge of agricultural financing and rural development programmes and departments could apply to the fund for financing of such programmes focused on alleviating the plight of the poor.

It cited the South African Poverty Relief Fund as an example of a stricter arrangement which Nigeria and other governments, for example, could emulate, saying that government agencies could obtain funds from it if they had already endeavoured to make their regular budgets more pro-poor.

It explained that a special poverty reduction fund would be a logical depository for a significant share of the money released by debt relief, such as from the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative.

With such arrangement, financing could be channelled more transparently into poverty reduction activities, UNDP said. It added that to avoid problems, two general features are desirable about such established funds.

First, the fund should be nationally managed and controlled in that external donors should neither control nor set conditions for its use. In other words, the country's national poverty reduction programme should determine the broad parameters for allocating the fund to beneficiary organisations. But this is a recommendation some external donors would not accept because of the abuse of such facilities through outright embezzlement and misappropriation of the funds for all but the specific purpose for which it was donated.

Secondly, according to UNDP, representatives of civil society organisations representing the poor and other non-governmental organisations should be active in overseeing the fund and deciding on how the money is allocated.

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