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Evaluating Country Programmes
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used available documentation on USAID programmes1 and Costa Rican development
from 1945 through 1995. The records were incomplete for the early part of the
period, however, and evaluations or project completion reports were often unavailable,
even for recent periods. The researchers were also provided with summaries
of interviews with about 100 Costa Ricans knowledgeable about specific USAID programmes,
and 25 Americans who had worked for the Agency in Costa Rica. The draft
sector studies were then reviewed at workshops in Costa Rica and Washington. The
sector studies, listed in the Appendix, provide the necessary background and
analysis for many of the conclusions in this report.
It is impossible to adequately characterise the impact of an enterprise with so
many diverse elements. Rather, the result of assistance was more a mosaic that
emerged from the independent decisions of large numbers of people spread over
decades. Some broad generalisations emerge from looking at this mosaic:
– Assistance programmes were collaborative and well intentioned, and most
achieved their intended purpose. Costa Rican economic and social progress
was faster as a result of these efforts.
– For the most part, USAID steered in the correct direction. The policies and
orientations that were pursued were generally better than those already
existing.
– The most successful activities included the Inter-American Highway, which
provided the backbone for Costa Rican transportation; collaborative rural
health programmes, which produced spectacular successes and were
adopted elsewhere; and the macro-economic reform programme of the
1980s.
– In retrospect, two large mistakes are evident: encouraging Costa Rica to participate
in the Central American Common Market, with its strong trade barriers
with other countries; and trying to enlarge governmental social
programmes in the late 1970s, when an economic crisis loomed.
– In these and other cases, USAID approaches improved over time. Lessons
from past failures, in Costa Rica and elsewhere, were gradually incorporated
into new projects.
– Overall, US economic assistance to Costa Rica met both the developmental
and the foreign policy goals it was intended to serve.
Why foreign aid to Costa Rica?
Official foreign aid is a post – World War II phenomenon. Before that, though
the US Government sometimes provided temporary relief in response to both natural
and man-made catastrophes, during most of US history, annual government
appropriations for “charity” to other countries had been a foreign idea. Yet between
OECD 1999