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three-year plan—mainstreaming at the sectoral level is yet to take place.
For example, the Inter-Ministerial Technical Commi� ees, chaired by the
secretary of the relevant ministries and created as part of the Na� onal
Implementa� on Arrangements of the Enhanced Integrated Framework,
are yet to be fully ac� vated. Likewise, the roles and responsibili� es of the
sectoral ministries for trade policy/strategy implementa� on are yet to be
clearly defi ned.
In a departure from the norm of looking at mainstreaming only at the
partner country level, the Nepal study also assesses whether donors have
mainstreamed trade in their country strategies. The report only considers
the global-level strategies of donors. The Nepal study fi nds that most donors
are yet to mainstream trade in the planning and implementa� on of their aid
strategy in Nepal. "Peace-building" ac� vi� es have become donor darlings.
According to government offi cials, there is inadequate sensi� za� on and
awareness about AfT among donors at the country level. Staff at the World
Bank's Nepal country offi ce, while being interviewed for the study, expressed
ignorance about the AfT ini� a� ve. All this suggests that mainstreaming by
donors at the global level may not be mirrored at local-level donor strategies.
Alignment
Two major components of alignment are donor alignment with country
strategies (including policies and priori� es) and donor alignment with
country systems (including public fi nancial management and procurement
systems). The Report fi nds that alignment is improving albeit unevenly, but
its assessment of alignment is almost exclusively centred on the fi rst aspect
of alignment. Ques� on No. 15 in the ques� onnaire for partner countries,
which is supposed to deal with the issue of alignment in its en� rety, only asks
whether donors are be� er aligning their support around partner country's
trade-related priori� es.
The issue of strengthening partner country systems and aligning aid with
them is hardly discussed in the Report. The tendency of some donors to
bypass the na� onal systems and deliver aid through parallel implementa� on
units emerged as a serious issue in the Nepal study, as did the excessively
"bureaucra� c" na� onal Procurement Act. An assessment of this aspect of
alignment in Report would have been illumina� ng.
Impact
The Report fi nds that AfT's main achievements so far relate to raising
awareness about trade's role in development and to improving the delivery
of AfT. This fi nding is based on the responses of partner countries. Partner
countries report having achieved less in terms of improved economic
and trade performance, with posi� ve answers for "increased trade" and
"increased exports" below 50 percent.
The Report points to the measurement problem in assessing traderelated
outcomes—importantly, the problem of a� ribu� on—as a possible
Changing paradigms of aid eff ec� veness in Nepal 179