Germany has reason to be pleased: The interim results of a peer review of the country’s aid program note the substantial progress that has been made over the past two years.
A team of reviewers who evaluated Germany’s progress on behalf of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released an interim report detailing the gains Germany made since OECD Development Assistance Committee members conducted a peer review in 2010. Among notable achievements? The merger of Germany’s three main agencies for technical cooperation.
“Germany now has an effective implementing organization of technical cooperation for development,” Gudrun Kopp, parliamentary state secretary to the federal minister for economic cooperation and development, said in a press release, “Moreover this makes clear that our focus on the environment, climate and private sector development will be appreciated.”
Following the recommendations of the 2010 peer review, Germany consolidated the German Development Service, German Technical Cooperation and InWEnt into one technical cooperation agency: the German Society for International Cooperation, or GIZ.
German Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Dirk Niebel personally welcomed the review team, who arrived days before the German Parliament reduced the 2013 budget of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, or BMZ, to €6.3 billion ($8 billion).
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