Chapter II: National Execution Background

The genesis of NEX can be found in the UNDP Governing Council decision of 2 July 1976 (76/57) to experiment with government execution. Five years later, a follow-up decision (81/21) lamented the lack of progress and in 1982 (82/8), the Council requested that the Administrator review the NEX experimental period. As a result, and based on the Administrator's report, the Council approved the extension of add-on funds for the support of NEX. In 1987 (87/14), the Council, taking into consideration the progress made, asked the Administrator to undertake the first evaluation of NEX in order to assess its impact and cost effectiveness. In 1987 (42/196), the UN General Assembly called for further support and flexibility to facilitate NEX. And in the following year the Governing Council (88/18), noting the expansion of NEX, its cost effectiveness and its contribution to self-reliance, urged the Administrator to promote the involvement of the UN specialized agencies in the use of this modality. The December 1989 (44/211) decision of the UN General Assembly was a turning point, formalizing the rules and procedures to promote and maximize the utilization and strengthening of national capacities, while enabling the governments to make effective use of the expertise available within the UN system. Subsequently, in its December 1992 resolution, the General Assembly reiterated that NEX should be the norm for programme implementation with due consideration of the needs and capacities of the recipient countries.

Parallel to these decisions, other Governing Council decisions sharpened the definitions and passed related legislation. In June 1990 (90/21), the Council agreed that NEX did not necessarily imply having the capacity to implement all aspects of the project cycle and called for increased use of governmental and NGO services in implementation. As a separate decision (90/26), the Governing Council proposed that the successor arrangements should provide incentives for sharper technical focus by Agencies under nationally executed projects. A year later (91/27) the Council reaffirmed the need to promote NEX, while calling attention to the fact that NEX should be country specific and at the request of the recipient countries. It also encouraged the shift of the specialized agencies away from project operation and administrative support towards provision of analytical and technical advice and support. In July, 1992, the new arrangements for agency support costs were finalized and national execution was declared to be the norm for programmes and projects. NEX thus became the normal modality for programme formulation of technical assistance projects in all the recipient countries, except in special instances.

The move from agency execution to national execution was not uniform in all the regions; certain important variations are observable. The earliest dramatic change occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean region. By 1990, NEX already accounted for 57% of total IPF funds. By 1993, NEX had risen to almost 90% in Latin America.

In the Asia and the Pacific region the increase since 1990 is even more dramatic, with utilization rising from about 16% to almost 80% of the IPF. In Africa and the Arab states, progress has been more steady and deliberate. In Africa, it rose from 32% to 78% of the IPF between 1990 and 1993. In the Arab States, it rose from 52% to 62% during the same period.

The decision of the General Assembly and the Governing Council to make NEX the norm is intended as a means to achieve self-reliance and build national capacities, and not as an end in itself. Hence, a statistical analysis does not reveal the complex and multiple ramifications of introducing this modality. Issues related to the responsibility of the governments, the role of the country offices, financial and substantive account ability and programme/project quality require continuous fine tuning if the set objectives are to be achieved and the forthcoming country programmes are to utilize the NEX modality more efficiently. In fact, the weight of the present evaluation is on the issues ensuing from the implementation of the NEX rather than its comparison with other modalities.