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]]>The Officer of Auditor General (OAG) revealed this in its 56th annual report released on April 12, 2019.
According to OAG, the funds received by INGOs are three times more than what they disclosed to the concerned government authority through the Aid Management Platform (AMP).
AMP, managed by the Finance Ministry, keeps tracks foreign aid to Nepal received from the government and non-government sectors. While, the Social Security Council (SSC) is the authorized department to monitor international and domestic non-government sectors.
INGOs disclosed NPR 58.58 billion to AMP as their foreign aid earnings for FY 2015-16 and FY 2016-17. But the deposits they made to commercial banks show NPR 153.72 billion as the total funds received.
By doing so, INGOs have violated the Project Agreement Appraisal Guidelines of SSC that mandates them to maintain data transparency with SSC and AMP.
“The mobilization of funds received by INGOs to implement the projects should be made transparent. Monitoring should be strengthened,” OAG report stated.
“Such a massive gap between their reporting to the government agencies and bank accounts certainly raises questions over the transparency of funds received by them,” says a senior official at the Ministry of Finance.
SSC officials opine that INGOs’ non-disclosure of the fund received from residential donor agencies might have caused this discrepancy in overall amount.
“As per the existing laws related to the non-government sector, INGOs should be affiliated to the Social Welfare Council and work after signing an agreement with us, but a number of INGOs are yet to be affiliated to us,” says Shiva Kumar Basnet, SSC Spokesperson.
The government has been failing to stop the flow of funds through INGOs for local development projects.
According to Nepal’s Development Cooperation Policy, the donor funds to the country should not come through INGOs.
“The government’s position is that INGOs should bring funds with their own efforts from abroad, but this policy largely remains unimplemented,” says a Finance Ministry official.
According to the Finance Ministry’s Development Cooperation Report 2018, residential donors have pumped in around USD 134.33 funds through INGOs, amounting to 10 percent of the total aid received by donors In the fiscal year 2017-18.
USAID, WFP, EU, UNCF, German Aid Agency (GIZ), Norway and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SADC) are among the international donors (with residential offices in Nepal) that have contributed to INGOs in the last fiscal.
Surprisingly, the Association of INGOs (AINGOs) Nepal is not aware of the situation!
“I am not aware of this matter. What I know is all INGO funds raised either from outside or inside the country should technically be reported in their project agreements with the Social Welfare Council,” says Shibesh Chandra Regmi, Chairperson of AINGOs Nepal.
Meanwhile, local NGOs also disagree with the fund mobilization through INGOs and raised the concern in the 9th General Convention in December 2018.
They opine that the mobilization through INGOs results in higher administrative costs, leaving little fund for actual works on-ground.
Will have to wait and see how the government acts on this perennial issue. Stay tuned for updates!
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]]>Nepal’s I/NGO regulatory body, Social Welfare Council (SWC), confirmed this in its recent report, where it said the Nepal Government received a sum of Rs 39 billion in funds from INGOs & NGOs during the FY 2017-18.
While INGOs accounted for Rs 18.51 billion revenue, NGO contribution stood at Rs 20 billion.
Surprisingly, contribution from INGOs/NGOs was higher than the total grant of Rs 36.16 billion the government received during the same period.
Whereas, the total foreign grant during the same period stood at Rs 111 billion with the inclusion of loans, informed the Finance Ministry.
It is noteworthy here that the country received even more funds in the previous fiscal FY 2015-16 recorded at Rs 42.92billion, at the time when the country was recovering from the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake.
Matter of Concerns Under Scan
The recent statistics have come in at a time when the NGOs/INGOs are facing severe scrutiny over flow of their funds through improper channels.
According to government officials, INGO/NGO funds are not channeled through the government’s budgetary system, thus avoiding the chances of bringing in accountability to public notice.
While the organizations argue that they have been submitting their audit reports to SWC annually, SWC fails to provide collective records of the same, thus raising doubts over INGO/NGO spending.
Surprisingly, SWC has no clue on how many NGOs actually submitted audit reports and the areas they spent on.
SWC cites ‘lack of software to process data’ as the reason behind not having collective records. “We are working to install the software,” says Hari Tiwari, Acting Director of SWC.
Even the Finance Ministry says that they don’t have a mechanism to tally records of such organizations.
“Despite having thousands of NGOs and significant amounts in foreign aid, Nepal remains one of the poorest countries in South Asia,” said the government in its report entitled “A study on Foreign Aid Mobilization in Federal Nepal” in December 2017.
The government terms INGOs/NGOs operations and outputs as ‘debatable’.
Tiwari justifies the government’s statement in saying that many domestic and international INGOs/NGOs have come under scanner for their conduct and preaching religion.
Meanwhile, Shibesh Chandra Regmi, Chairman of the Association of International NGOs (AIN), says the role of INGOs/NGOs has been crucial to developing the country’s Human Development Index (HDI).
“There has been substantial progress in areas of education, health, women empowerment, capacity building, and livelihoods in the country with contributions from the NGOs and INGOs,” says Regmi.
Regmi denies with government’s statement that these organizations bypass local governments in their operations.
Government’s move to rein the NGO sector through the National Integrity Policy (NIP), which failed due to wide criticism and protests from related stakeholders.
Will have to wait and watch how the government reacts to the already-burning issue in the wake of current statistics that have shown high NGO contribution to its treasury!
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