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Education Sector Corruption in Ethiopia 87
Any capture would be opportunistic rather than systemic because
woredas are controlled by party structures with an interest in service
delivery.
• In a small proportion of woredas, the planning and budgeting process
appears skewed, either geographically or ethnically. However, corruption
is only one possible explanation for such distortions, and more detailed
study would be required before firm conclusions could be drawn.
• One area of potential leakage at the woreda level concerns off-budget
funds provided by donors and NGOs.
Fiscal transfers
Bribery or extortion to ensure funding transfers—risk: low. Fiscal transfers
in the education sector can be affected by public officials corruptly
exerting improper pressure to speed up or divert agreed funding transfers.
The fiscal transfer process in Ethiopia is immediate and centrally controlled.
The system is audited (through internal, external, and random
audit checks) and has built-in checks and balances. It would appear
that the money is getting through the system to its intended end
accounting centers.
These findings are borne out by the results of a World Bank PBS Review
conducted in the regions of Amhara, Oromia, and SNNPR using woredalevel
budget and monthly block grant transfer data for 283 woredas (World
Bank 2006). The review confirmed that the subnational budget envelopes
and block grant disbursements from the federal to subnational levels were
adhering to the established intergovernmental rules framework. Essentially,
budget resources were being disbursed per the fiscal transfer formula, and
there was no statistically significant deviation from the disbursed versus
the entitled budgets across the woredas (World Bank 2006).
Summary of fiscal transfer risks. Although the scope of this aspect of the
study is limited, initial indications both from stakeholder responses and
from secondary sources are that disbursements from the federal to subnational
levels broadly adhere to established rules (table 3.5).
Table 3.5
Summary of Corruption Risks in Fiscal Transfers
Form of corruption
Bribery or extortion to ensure funding transfers
Source: Author.
Perceived corruption risk
Low Medium High
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