Norwegian views on Poverty Reduction Strategy Processes in partner countries

This document presents an overview of Norwegian views in order to promote national poverty reduction strategies (PRSs) in partner countries, and the relationship with Norwegian development co-operation at the country level.

The paper asserts that national ownership of strategies and development efforts, and recipient responsibility are necessary conditions for achieving poverty reduction. One way to promote ownership and recipient responsibility is to support the development of national PRSs, and base development co-operation on these strategies.

Conclusions and recommendations include:

• Norway strongly supports development of national PRSs, and will base development co-operation with individual countries on nationally owned PRSs where they exist
• in developing a PRS, one should use and develop the existing national planning system. This means that the PRSP-concept, as seen from the World Bank, the IMF, and other donors, must be a flexible concept
• the development of PRSPs should not delay the HIPC-debt relief process, which may be based on an Interim PRSP
• priority should be given to develop PRSs which are the result of processes which make the strategies "owned" by the developing countries. However, in most countries, "broad consultations" should imply that the democratic institutions and processes are strengthened, i.e. local and national governmental capacity are increased, political parties are strengthened, so is the parliament etc. One should be reluctant to spend too many resources on supplementary processes and institutions related to the PRSP-process only
• in order to implement the PRSs, the strategy should be linked to the annual budgets. The annual budgets must cover all donor contributions. Both donors and partner countries must contribute to realise this
• to promote aid effectiveness and to reduce the burden on the capacity in the partner countries, PRSs should form the basis for donor co-ordination. Reporting processes should also be based on the national review systems e.g. on the governments own procedures for PRSP-monitoring, and the national accounts
• with partners, Norway aims at being an active dialogue partner in planning, implementing and monitoring the PRS process
• Norway will continue to change the focus from project support to programme and budget support. This requires an increased focus on policies, institutions, and economic and political performance
• within the framework of a long term development partnership with main partner countries Norway will also focus more on actual performance as a basis for further development aid