Aid money 'swallowed up' by admin

Fiona Walker
Frontline Scotland

Jack McConnell has visited Malawi to raise awareness of problems there

Nearly a third of the £2m spent on Scotland's Malawi programme has gone on running costs, rather than helping those in need, BBC Scotland has found.

The amount is about five times the running costs for similar work carried out by a Westminster department.

The details followed a BBC request under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Scottish Executive insisted value for money was still being provided and said that costs were likely to be higher at the beginning of the project.

'Help the poor'

Orison Chaponda, a Malawian development worker, was angry at the revelation.

He said: "This is a scandal to a poor country like Malawi, to a partnership of people who are supposed to know what they're supposed to do.

"The partnership was premised on helping the poorest of the poor, and yet the beneficiaries are not the poorest of the poor."

The executive set up an International Development Policy in 2005, the year Scotland hosted the G8 summit.

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The partnership between the executive and the UK Government was hailed at the time as a new model for aid.

BBC Scotland's Frontline programme asked the executive to release details on how taxpayers' money was being spent delivering the policy.

From those responses, the running costs of the programme up until September 2006 were calculated.

These included all administration, staff wages, trips by executive officials and advisors and a conference.

The total amount spent until September 2006 was £2.08m. Of this, £1.44m was given to organisations to run aid projects while £640,000 was spent on running costs.

Figures from this date to the present day were not available.

Details were then compared with the costs of Westminster's much bigger Department for International Development (DFID), which spends a total of £65m on the African country.

Of DFID's budget, running costs equate to about 6% for comparable work.

Administration will be perhaps higher at the beginning than it is towards the end of a project Patricia Ferguson Overseas Development Minister Search for Malawi's millions

Overseas Development Minister Patricia Ferguson told BBC Scotland that an effort was made to keep running costs of the executive's program to a minimum.

She said: "When you're starting out on something fresh, it's very important that you discuss that with people who have an expert view.

"That ultimately means that administration will be perhaps higher at the beginning than it is towards the end of a project.

"But that doesn't mean to say that we're not providing value for the money."

The remaining £1.44m of the Scottish budget was awarded to charities and other organisations for aid projects.

Some of this was also spent on administration at grass roots level, although the executive was unable to say how much.

BBC Scotland found one project where they spent two thirds of its budget in the first year on "co-ordination" and "evaluation", which project leaders said was essential.

The executive has said it will look into this project but added that some projects were running very cost-effectively.