Kathmandu, December 19
The United Kingdom has kept the identities of recipients of aid totalling £11.7 million (around 1.57 billion rupees) in Nepal under wraps, data on Devtracker, the government’s aid transparency database, shows.
This is around 33 per cent of the aid the Department for International Development has given to partners in Nepal in course of the last two British fiscal years under ‘Humanitarian Assistance and Emergency Relief.
Globally, over the period, the UK has given “more than £2.5 billion in foreign aid to companies and individuals by keeping their identities secret”. Thousands of payments have been made to “unnamed suppliers” in the past five years, an analysis of more than 70,000 aid transactions shows. Many go to suppliers in countries such as Syria and Afghanistan where there are security reasons for protecting the names of those receiving British aid. However, Dfid has also withheld the names of dozens of recipients involved in earthquake relief in the Philippines and Nepal and building a geothermal power plant in the Caribbean, according to a report in The Times.
The department has not revealed where £42 million of aid in India, nearly £70 million of spending in Ethiopia and £17 million in Burma has gone. In one case, the name of a think-tank, which received £65,000 for a literature review into the relationship between poverty rights and development, was withheld.
In 2010, Andrew Mitchell, who was international development secretary, promised that taxpayers would “see exactly how and where overseas aid money is being spent”. Two years later, Justine Greening, his successor, said transparency was her “top priority” as it “made sure money gets to the people who need it most”.
Devtracker withholds the names of recipients of aid totalling more than £6 billion. For about £3.5 billion of this the supplier’s name is revealed in another part of the spending data, typically in the project name.
Of the remainder, suppliers who have been kept anonymous include those who received £11.7 million of spending in Nepal after the earthquake last year and the recipients of nearly £30 million spent on typhoon relief in the Philippines. Dfid published the names of some recipients of funds given to Pakistan after flooding in 2010 but not all.
In another case, identities of suppliers were withheld in a project to fund 21 British “junior professional officers” on secondment with the United Nations. In another, the suppliers of a “research project” into the cost effectiveness of community health workers were kept secret.
Two projects linked to the construction of a geothermal power plant in Montserrat, in the Caribbean, are responsible for £11.4 million in funding to suppliers whose names have not been divulged.
“A problem with Dfid’s computers meant that some suppliers’ identities had been withheld unjustifiably. Staff are going through projects to name suppliers where appropriate,” reported The Times.
A spokeswoman for Dfid told the paper: “Dfid staff and partners operate in some of the most dangerous parts of the world, so some details are withheld to allow them to safely carry out their work tackling poverty and conflict, which is making the UK safer and more secure.”
