Managing for Development Results at ADB

Results Matter October 2007

Ownership is the Premise for Achieving Development Results
By Liqun Jin, Vice President, Asian Development Bank

VP Jin speaks at a country partnership strategy workshop

The choice of development approach must primarily draw upon development practice in the developing countries. In this context, formulating a development strategy must fully reflect the ownership of the developing countries. For all the aid money pouring into a poor country, nothing is going to happen that people do not choose. It is imperative to adopt a broad-based approach to poverty reduction, sustainable economic growth, and social development. The government and the people should be convinced of the development effectiveness in the first instance. In addition to economic growth, upgrading public sector management, improving efficiency of public services, ameliorating investment climate, and increasing spending on human development services will all have a positive bearing on achieving development effectiveness.

Renewed emphasis on investment in infrastructure has been placed by multilateral development banks in recent years. This is critical to remove the bottlenecks to development. Getting infrastructure right requires more than just finance. It requires vision, strategic planning and management, attention to social and environmental consequences, and the capacity to follow through. Undoubtedly, one of the most important outcomes of well-designed and well-managed programs in developing countries is that they allow a government to move to higher levels of sophistication, broadening its horizons, and raising the intellectual capacity of society as a whole.

I hold the opinion that development ownership is the premise for achieving development results. Countries differ from each other, such as their development priorities and strategies; but the formulation of each country’s own development strategies in line with the local conditions will often determine its ultimate development results. To achieve favorable results, the recipient countries should be encouraged to choose and to establish their own rational and feasible programs, fit into the actual development circumstances, including state of public sector reform, and their own implementation capacity. This does not mean, however, that donors should not impart to them valuable knowledge and experiences available from other countries when working with them in setting out the development strategy.

It is necessary that all donors should work in close collaboration in helping developing countries achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Currently, many donors are facing tremendous challenges on how to formulate appropriate country development strategies based on their comparative advantages. The international donor community should up the ante for achieving aid effectiveness, which can only be measured by results on the ground. The grand jury is none other than the people for which aid is intended for. I think all donors will be required to pay more attention to the demand of recipient countries, and to strike a proper balance between aid for capacity and for projects to support infrastructure, environment, and the social sector. Donors are accountable not just to the taxpayers in their own countries, but more importantly to the people in the developing countries they intend to help.

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