Tracking External Donor Funding.pdf - NDC

V. The Evolution of the Palestinian Assistance Monitoring System (PAMS)
In 2003 the MoP’s General Directorate for Aid Management and Coordination began an effort to track donor funding
into the West Bank and Gaza Strip in a Mechanism known as PAMS, the Palestinian Aid Monitoring System.
Through an interactive computer-based archive, donors were asked to submit the data from their projects, or enter it in
directly, starting from the year 2002 7 . Donors were asked for a basic amount of information primarily focused on type
and conduit of aid.
Type of Aid
Conduits of Aid
Budget Support
Emergency and Relief Assistance
Development (technical assistance and institution-building)
PNA
UNRWA
NGOs
The process of asserting more and more control over both the data and coordination of international assistance to the
WB&GS by the Palestinian Authority continued into 2005 8 . The PAMS data tracking system was updated, improved
and placed under the control of a new MoP Directorate for Aid Management and Coordination (AMC), charged with
monitoring project information’ (MOP 2005:2).
According to the MoP, the information gathered in 2004 was significantly greater than in 2003, and included sector,
budgets, contractual data and geographic location of the projects implementation. This was far above and beyond the
previous year’s collection of data on only type and conduit.
Despite the improvements, there was still a heavy reliance on data from the World Bank and, as in 2004’s report on aid
in 2003, the MoP found it particularly difficult to access data from the NGO sector (2005:1)
In May of 2008, the Ministry of Planning issued a report covering the 3 previous years of international aid flows to the
occupied Palestinian Territories. The fact that the report was released three years after the previous one reflects the
turbulence within the Palestinian Authority, and its return to a type of policy making normalcy under the Emergency
Caretaker Government. By this time the PAMS system was beginning to generate much higher quality data in an easy to
use system.
V.1 Challenges of PAMS
In the beginning of the PAMS effort, the MoP comments that donors were either unwilling or unprepared to give them
the information needed to build a proper data base, forcing the first report from the AMC, Donor’s Assistance to the
Occupied Palestinian Territories for the Year 2003, to rely heavily upon World Bank data, and the previously
discredited data from MOPIC. The MoP’s attempt to gain access to the finances and activities of donors, under the
auspices of the 2003 report by OECD, Harmonization of Donor Practices for Effective Aid Delivery 9 , was as an
unwelcome encroachment, especially concerning international aid to NGO sector.
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All projects which began prior to 2002 and were still ongoing do not have financial data broken down by years, rather it is all offered as the
aggregate (prior to 2002).
Prior to the creation of the PNA, international assistance was channeled essentially through UNRWA and NGOs. The last ten years have seen
the PNA emerge as the leading service provider in the WB&GS. Moreover, the first phase of reconstruction, as well as the recent Intifada,
resulted in a greater need for budget support, which at times absorbed almost half of the total annual aid disbursed in the WB&GS. By 2003,
international assistance was channeled primarily through the PNA, 25% through UNRWA and 10% through NGOs’ (MoP, 2005:5).
According to the report, ‘Donors should provide partner governments with full information of aid flows. This should be done regularly and in a
timely manner’ (OECD, 2003). For its part, the intentions of the MoP were clear. A new movement toward Palestinian ‘ownership’ over the aid
process was beginning, one which has so far culminated in the 2007 Palestinian Reform and Development Plan. Regarding the OECD’s
position, “the MOP strongly supports this recommendation and will take all measures necessary to implement it” (MOP, 2004:11).
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