INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Bangladesh and 49% in South Sudan as the FCDO sought to reduce the aid budget from 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national income
Support for Palestinian refugees in Syria was discontinued, despite warnings about the impact on health and education, and funding to the UN
population fund was cut.The audit, published on Thursday, said 15 FCDO country and regional offices had their funding cut by more than 50%
compared with the previous year.These offices were left to make their own decisions about what to cut, according to criteria such as
performance, but, because of previous cuts, even well-performing programmes faced spending reductions.Ministers told offices not to discuss
the cuts with their local partners, which the audit said meant staff could not get advice from them.The audit said because the decision to
cut aid was made only a month before it was announced in the spending review in November 2020; the FCDO was forced to quickly make immediate
changes to programmes that had been planned to run for several years.This meant the FCDO could not carry out a thorough review of the impact
the cuts would have, or whether the changes in spending would be good value for money, it concluded.The audit pointed out that 11% of the
reductions has had an immediate impact locally and the effect on long-term value for money is not yet known
FCDO must build its understanding of how the spending reductions have affected development outcomes to help it plan its approach to future
This article first appeared/also appeared in theguardian.com
