CATCH THE TIGER BY ITS TAIL - COUNTERPART FUNDS IN THE EVALUATION OF PROGRAM AID

Counterpart funds generated by programme aid do not provide real resou rces over and above the commodities or foreign exchange transferred as aid: they represent the tail not the tiger. However, donor policy has evolved to recognise this fact and now focuses less on specific ear-m arking of counterpart Funds, more on the overall quality ol the budget process. This development opens up new and more interesting possibili ties for evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of counterpart fu nd management. The paper proposes performance criteria, especially for bilateral donors supporting the budget through counterpart fund gener ation. Existing evaluations do not generally provide information about whether these standards have been satisfied. This is a task for the f uture.