2.5. Effectiveness
The question addressed under this section can be phrased as
follows: what would have happened if the donor community had insisted on
all the ingredients of the new conditionality safe the mandatory participation
of civil society? Would the PRSP have been less effective? Put more con-
structively, did participation make a positive difference?
To provide an answer, we must first look at how the PRSP has been
made up and how strong its claims to effectiveness are. The Bolivian PRSP
is a combination of a long-term strategy document and a summary public
sector spending plan. To give a few examples of the former, the causes of ru-
ral and urban poverty are well analyzed, the socio-cultural exclusion of the
indigenous population (more than half the population) is portrayed, and the
problem of corruption is squarely addressed. The document sets a number
of priorities, among them education and health services for the poor, rural
economic infrastructure, and reform of the public sector. A large number
of surprisingly detailed targets are put forward. In the area of health, for
instance, the overall aim is an increase in life expectancy at birth from 62.7
year in 2000 to 67.1 years in 2010. This is to be achieved through further
targets such as a specified decrease in child mortality, in turn made possi-
ble by among others a specified increase in the coverage in the treatment of
child pneumonia. In the next step, a number of activities are broadly identi-
fied, such as total mileage of new rural roads, or number of rural clinics,
which are necessary to achieve the set targets, although it is a mystery how
the planners managed to establish such a precise, mathematical relation
between broadly defined activities and results. Using the unitary costs of the
public investment plan of 2000, the projected activities are then translated
into an estimate of the total cost of the PRSP for the period 2001-2006. On
the basis of macroeconomic projections of the growth rate of the economy
and its components, the budgetary possibilities of the public sector are then
estimated. What is not covered by the budget will come from the donors,
through HIPC debt relief and other aid already pledged, and any financing
gap that is left will have to be covered by the private sector or by additional
foreign aid. The Bolivian PRSP does not contain a detailed budget for, say,
the first three years, in terms of investments projects or programs that have
already been subject to detailed feasibility studies. This part of the plan is
to be elaborated later, and in the process, the budget and the targets for the
PRSP will be revised in consultation with donors and civil society.
The PRSP thus makes bold claims, but does not explain precisely
through which interventions the targets will be met. Lacking the normal
building blocks of a plan, i.e. projects and programs, it is difficult to judge
whether the myriad of objectives are realistic. Many commentators from the
donor community and civil society have for instance questioned whether the
economic growth projection underlying the PRSP, of 5% to 5.5% a year, are
realistic, although the experts from the World Bank and the IMF staff think
it is feasible, if challenging22. This is a sensitive point politically, as lower
22 Even as it is, the planning
exercise ends up with a financing
gap of US$0.9 billion whose
funding has not been secured.
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