THE EU AND THE WAGES OF FECKLESS AID IN LAOS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 VIENTIANE 000405 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPT FOR EB AND EAP/MLS PASS TO USAID E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/04/2011 TAGS: EAID ECON PGOV PHUM LA SUBJECT: THE EU AND THE WAGES OF FECKLESS AID IN LAOS REF: A. VIENTIANE 76 ¶B. VIENTIANE 152 ¶C. VIENTIANE 212 ¶D. VIENTIANE 302 ¶E. VIENTIANE 307 ¶F. VIENTIANE 360 ¶G. VIENTIANE 321 ¶H. VIENTIANE 367 ¶I. VIENTIANE 396 VIENTIANE 00000405 001.2 OF 002 Classified By: Ambassador P. Haslach. Reason 1.4 (D) ¶1. (C) Summary: Feckless aid has long provided a life-line to the Lao government, despite its failure to meet conditions set for certain projects and its regular violations of human rights. Major donors such as the Japanese look set to continue to bankroll the regime unconditionally, and the EU has just announced plans to join them in this untoward course. End summary. Paving the road to. . . -------------- ¶2. (C) Refs. A, C, and E are recommended to those interested in how and why Laos has failed to reform and progress, even though surrounded by vibrant economies bent on treating it as their poorest province. Unconditional assistance has been the main reason for this. The local newspapers on any given day are full of reports of more aid rolling in. A half-century of aid from successive generations of donors (of quite different political stripes) has produced a culture of aid dependence but has not resulted in anything like levels of development commensurate with the cost. Despite all the money and all the good intentions, Laos remains one of the poorest and least developed countries in East Asia, with one of the regions most repressive governments -- a perfect example of the effects of moral hazard. There's more than one born every minute -------------- ¶3. (C) Major donors persist in handing money directly to the Lao Government, along with wispy admonitions that the denizens of a military dictatorship in Communist garb should go forth and do good with it. While the GoL admits to about 65 percent of its budget being ODA, informed observers here reckon that figure at 80 percent or more, with few strings attached. There is little or no oversight on how such assistance money is really used. Among the few principles hard-headed observers here can agree upon is that money given directly to the GoL quickly escapes from view and is lost to any real reckoning. ¶4. (C) The USG gives comparatively small amounts of aid to Laos, and almost exclusively through NGOs and IOs. We also require regular accounting and routinely go out to project sites make sure conditions of the aid are being met. On the other end of the spectrum Japan (bilaterally),and ADB (multilaterally) give vast sums and are heedless of accounting or practical results. The EU, which has always been somewhere in the middle with a multitude of development projects - on the whole competently administered - is fixing to join them. Look who we're bankrolling -------------- ¶5. (C) GoL line ministries (Potemkin affairs facing outboard to receive aid from donors) have been gathering in foreign aid to the tune of about $500 million annually, while the real GoL (the military, security apparatus, and upper echelons of the Communist Party) have focused solely on remaining in power, violating basic human rights and spending other people's money along the way. That Laos remains a military dictatorship behind a ministerial facade was made abundantly clear this year, when human rights violations ranging from massacres to imprisoning children have been regularly reported (Refs. F, H, I and previous; refs. B, E, G and previous). A perverse move -------------- ¶6. (C) In early April the donor community in Vientiane met for a periodic informal donor's meeting, and several donors recounted the programs they were pursuing and described their plans for the future (ref. C and previous described ADB's plan, annunciated at an earlier meeting). There was talk VIENTIANE 00000405 002.2 OF 002 about the GoL's recalcitrance and the need to tighten up on aid goals and procedures, but main thrust of the discussion was that donors must find ways to continue giving, despite declining aid budgets. Lip service only was paid to the great need for policy reform, strategic issues with leverage effects, and a strategic dialogue. ¶7. (C) There was also much discussion of the Poverty Reduction Support Operation (PRSO) - a document drafted by the World Bank and GOL that is supposed to represent Laos, own declared needs and strategies. The World Bank will hold and monitor donor contributions in a trust fund intended to support the PRSO. These monies will then go directly to the GOL. This is meant to be the preferred mechanism for giving aid to Laos in the future, in order to foster Lao "ownership" of development programs. ¶8. (C) The corker was when the EU Resident Representative announced a European aid strategy for Laos from 2007 to 2013 that will have at its core direct contributions to the PRSO trust fund, using it to provide direct support for the Lao budget. This will comprise 70 percent of the EU,s total bilateral contribution (the real amounts are not yet know, and will not be until June, at the earliest). The remaining 30 percent will be equally divided among resettlement issues (forced resettlement is a problem in Laos, and the EU Resrep's particular issue),trade and economic cooperation and development, and governance. There will be contributions to regional efforts as well, under the EC-ASEAN Cooperation Agreement, and efforts will be made to have the EU contributions parallel bilateral aid efforts by individual EU states. However, the project-specific approach followed by the EU heretofore is to be largely abandoned. Why Switch? -------------- ¶9. (C) The EU says the project approach produced results that EU officials find difficult to quantify. They also note there has been insufficient delegation of authority to EU sponsored project field staff, problems with corruption, and insufficient integration of project goals into the recipient countries' development goals. Switching to direct contributions to the budget is also supposed to lessen the EU's administrative burden. The EU representative defended this switch as enhancing Lao "ownership" of the aid program, and a means to ensure that European aid supports Lao priorities, although to many observers here GoL priorities are much of the problem. This approach was repeated in the EU's decision to provide Avian Influenza assistance through a newly established World Bank trust fund which will bankroll GOL efforts in this sector. Comment -------------- ¶10. (C) No one is prepared to hold the GoL's feet to the fire in accounting for the assistance they receive. GOL backsliding on, for example, the conditions of the Nam Theun II Hydropower project, or the IMF,s Poverty Reduction Growth Facility (especially in the banking sector and tax/revenue reform) is conveniently ignored by most embassies. Graver issues, such as human rights abuse, have never been linked to aid by major donors. As a whole, the donor community is content to wring its hands, and then get on with the giving. The new EU position on aid would be to the good in a country in which the government acts in good faith and in the interests of its citizens, but Laos is not that kind of country. For our part, we continue to remind our fellow donors that there are consequences for providing unconditional funding such a government - though the donors, of course, are not the ones to suffer them. We also repeat what we have said before: to bankroll a regime such as this one is to be complicit in its career. HASLACH