Evaluating Country Programmes - OECD Online Bookshop

OECD 1999
CPE in the Netherland’s Development Assistance: The Case of Egypt
The efficiency of the CPEs may be enhanced by limiting their scope and by
improving their methodologies. Their duration and costs could also be reduced if
more coherent country programmes with clearly formulated objectives and targets
at country programme and sector levels, and improved monitoring and evaluation
practices at project level, were defined.
It is not advisable to reduce host country participation. Partnership with the
host country in the CPE leads to improvement in the quality of the evaluation and
to the incorporation of stakeholders’ views in the host country. This provides a
better basis for discussion about improvements in efficiency and effectiveness of
aid and enhances the prospects for sustainability of results.
Feedback in the Netherlands is favourably influenced by the practice of
forwarding evaluation reports to Parliament together with a formal policy reaction
by the Ministry for Development Co-operation, and subsequent discussion by the
Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs. CPEs have brought improvements in aid
management, both at the individual country level included in the exercise, and at
the generic level of overall development co-operation.
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