New Zealand aid transparency rates poorly

New Zealand ranks 12th on a list of countries whose aid transparency is rated as "poor". News media coverage is similarly impoverished. 

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NEWS ALERT


Two days after the Aid Transparency Index released its first "pilot" review of global donor systems, mainstream New Zealand media have yet to pick up on the country's poor rating.

Only Yahoo News, Voxy and Scoop news agency carried reports, all based on a press release claiming the index "hailed" the World Bank as the "best performer".

Least worst might be more accurate.

Ratings range only from fair, through moderate and poor, to "very poor" - with apparently no rankings for 'good' or 'very good.'

New Zealand is ranked at 12th worse on a list of 25 countries whose aid transparency is rated as "poor", and 30th overall. As with a number of other indexes, New Zealand rates lowly compared with governance leaders elsewhere, notably western European countries, mostly Scandinavian.

News media in New Zealand are not alone in ignoring the new index.

At post publication, mainstream news media in Australia are yet to report the index, at all, with civil society organisations barely better.

Worldwide, barely a dozen articles show up on Google News, with most coverage on the aid index coming from the United Kingdom, prompting debate in the House of Lords.

Primary conclusions from the pilot 2011 Aid Transparency Index :

> Most aid information is not published
> Information is produced but not always published and is far too hard to access and use
> Achieving aid transparency is possible

Primary recommendations :

> Increase political will and action – using the Aid Effectiveness Agenda as a springboard
> Organisations should publish what they have, build systems to collect what they don’t and make sure it is all accessible
> Aid actors must rally round the common IATI standard and increase its coverage

Aid Transparency Index about us.

> corrections > updates > new zealand ranking changed from 40th to 30tt

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