A state auditor Thursday urged the Foreign Ministry to present guidelines for the effective implementation of South Korea’s aid to developing countries in order to improve South Korea’s ties with the beneficiaries.
South Korea’s growing official development assistance fell short of making strategic and efficient contributions to underdeveloped countries due to the foreign ministry’s inefficient spending of the aid fund, the Board of Audit and Inspection of Korea said.
In announcing the results of a recent inspection of the ministry’s headquarters foreign missions, the BAI also advised the foreign minister to come up with a planning and management system for its ODA spending in order to raise efficiency.
South Korea’s ODA contribution reached US$1.85 billion last year, after recording the sharpest growth rate in ODA spending over the five years among the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
But the foreign ministry in charge of ODA failed to strategize on the fund, which was, as a result, inefficiently distributed to many international organizations in small sums, the BAI said in a statement.
“Despite the growing size of the fund for multilateral development cooperation, the concerned ministry let the fund managed by several divisions in charge of international organizations, without rules or guidelines on a strategy, plan, internal review process, or result assessment and management of the fund,” according to the BAI statement.
The Foreign Ministry unilaterally promised the World Bank in 2012 to make contributions to the bank’s Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund without necessary consultations with the finance ministry, which is in charge of overseeing contributions to global financial organizations, the audit agency said.
Despite the finance ministry’s resistance, the foreign ministry had to keep its promise and gave $10 million to the World Bank.
BAI said the assistance ended without continuation, impairing the effectiveness of South Korea’s ODA provision.
The Foreign Ministry also failed to follow a proper accounting rule when spending $500,000 for the launch of the South Korea-Mekong cooperation fund in 2013, according to BAI.
“The foreign minister is advised to prepare internal guidelines so the alloted fund for international organizations can be provided efficiently,” the audit agency said.
In the recent inspection result, the foreign ministry has also been chided for its supervision failure on illegal private-sector employment of former diplomats as well as irregular accounting by foreign missions. (Yonhap)
