Disbursement vs. Expenditure
There’s a fund in Southern Sudan which is something everyone calls a ‘pooled fund’ and that means that instead of donors giving their money to whatever they want they put it into a big fund that is run by the government and the UN. The problem with this particular pooled fund is that it’s been badly managed and manipulated by the powers that be and so has actually delivered practically nothing. This is nothing surprising here where funds frequently don’t actually disburse money that has been committed to the people that need it. It sits in bank accounts in New York, DC, and Nairobi and accumulates interest (to the tune of $1 million dollars in the case of this fund) and no one is really the wiser nor upset by the matter. Which makes me ask: why? And that niggling question led me to think about the economics of aid about which already volumes have been written so I won’t bore you with too many details however, if we think of aid as an economic transaction where someone is giving mone