Lagos — A coalition of International Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) yesterday criticised donors over the manner they delivered aid to needy countries.

The CSOs, over 300 of them from across the globe made this known in a paper prepared for the "2008 Accra High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness," a copy of which was made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.

The paper stated:"Aid flows are often volatile. Many donors make commitments for no more than one year and deliver aid late or not at all.

"Aid is often disbursed according to donors' own priorities and timetables, without making sufficient efforts to respect and conform with national planning and development priorities, or the national budgeting time frame.

"All these make it very difficult for recipients to prepare effective budgets, or to plan ahead, and makes it hard for CSOs to monitor aid flows and effectiveness."

They urged donors to make multi-year aid commitments based on clear and transparent criteria, adding that "donors should deliver those commitments on schedule, in a transparent manner".

The organisations also decried the current system of aid allocation, saying that donors allocated aid according to their own interests and objectives.

"A basic condition for aid effectiveness is that it should be allocated to the countries and areas which need it most.

"However, the current system of allocating aid too often does not respond to need; some donors continue to allocate aid according to their own interests and objectives.

"Others use allocation as a way to impose policy conditions and the system overall lacks coherence and coordination," they argued.

According to them, many countries and critical issues receive paltry aid allocations, urging the Accra High Level Forum to change that practice.

The groups also faulted the idea of 'tying' aid to the procurement of donor goods and services, saying that such practice led to inflated costs and slow delivery.

"It also reduced the flexibility of southern countries to direct aid where it was most needed. The primary beneficiaries of this practice are often firms and consultants in donor countries," they added.