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A good round-up of recent developments in the Pacific. The formation of sub-regional groups, the recent one being the proposal by the Polynesian countries, to my opinion, points to one thing - the distrust in current regional political mechanisms and organisations, especially the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) to address key issues affecting the region collectively. This means the PIF Comminique merely blankets the real sentiments of each island country, and established sub-groups such as the Melanesian Spearhead Group, on issues pertinent to the region. I hope that the formation of such sub-regional blocks will not derail the significance of the Pacific Islands Forum, and create a region divided on key economic, political and development issues, but provide platforms to strengthen the voice of the island countries.

As an extension to the discussion, it should be noted that a New WTO Procurement Deal is close. Forty-two countries are now close to agreeing an upgrade of their Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), a reform that could unlock tens of billions of dollars of commercial opportunities, and many times more if China gets on board. The GPA, a voluntary agreement within the World Trade Organization (WTO) opens a wide spectrum of public contracts in member countries to bidders from other members, improving competition and efficiency as well as providing massive new markets in areas such as infrastructure and transport. By upgrading the existing 1996 agreement, its members hope to bring their rules into the internet age, deepen market access and offer special treatment for developing countries. If the GPA members reach agreement, it would rescue trade ministers from a potentially embarrassing WTO meeting in December, since the 153 members have failed to clinch a deal on the Doha round of talks aimed at further liberalizing trade. The GPA talks, which had also taken 10 years so far, stood a better chance of success than Doha because they involved "a coalition of the willing" rather than the full WTO membership. The GPA is to date, the only legally binding agreement in the WTO focusing on the subject of government procurement. The GPA is a "plurilateral" agreement, which means that it applies to a number of WTO Members, but not all Members. The GPA's membership is limited to the 40 WTO Members that specifically signed the GPA or that have subsequently acceded to the Agreement. Several countries, including China, Jordan, and Moldova, are currently negotiating accession to the GPA. The GPA establishes an agreed framework of rights and obligations among its Parties with respect to their national laws, regulations, procedures and practices in the area of government procurement. An important cornerstone principle in this regard is non-discrimination. In respect of procurement, Parties are required to accord to the products, services and suppliers of any other Parties treatment “no less favourable” than they give to their domestic products, services and suppliers. In order to ensure that the basic principle of non-discrimination is followed and that access to procurement is available to foreign products, services and suppliers, the Agreement places considerable emphasis on procedures for providing transparency of laws, regulations, procedures and practices regarding government procurement. There is also a general requirement to publish laws, regulations, judicial decisions, administrative rulings of general application and any procedures regarding government procurement. The Agreement contains a number of detailed procedural obligations which procuring entities have to fulfil to ensure the effective application of its basic principles. In many respects, these provisions codify recognised good practices in the area of government procurement aimed at ensuring efficiency and value for money. In the context of the GPA, they also serve the purpose of guaranteeing that access to procurement is open and that an equal opportunity is given to both domestic as well as foreign supplies and suppliers in competing for government contracts. The Agreement covers the use of tender notices; the use of various tendering procedures; when negotiations can be held; minimum deadlines that must be allowed for the preparation, submission and receipt of tenders; the provision of all necessary information related to the procurement in question; obligations on technical specifications; procedural rules for submission, receipt and opening of tenders; evaluation and award of tenders; that information must be provided, after the award of the contract; and the mandatory requirements for the establishment of a domestic bid challenge system. Whilst no developing countries are either members or observers, the Agreement recognizes the development, financial and trade needs of developing countries, in particular least-developed countries, and allows special and differential treatment in order to meet their specific development objectives. The Agreement and its provisions provide an excellent starting point for developing countries that are reforming government procurement. The Agreement is comprehensive and again, the provisions codify good practices in government procurement. E. John Blunt is a Procurement and Institutional Expert with extensive experience in leading public procurement reforms in a variety of international development environments. he is currently working with the Southern African Development Community Secretariat in Botswana.

A great, thoughtul read, and important questions to ask as more and more donors move towards open data initiatives and strengthened transparency regimes. Is disclosure for disclosure's sake enough, or should donors be thinking more carefully about the end users of their data?

Nope, She is a Criminal on the run. She run away from Indonesia because she is a suspect of high level financial crime in Indonesia

I hope she become president of Indonesia, not president of world bank, her country need person like her

We need madam Sri Mulyani to lead our nation, our country Indonesia. We are proud of her to be a global true leader but Indonesia need her. We wait for her in our Presidential Election in 2014.

Thanks for an interesting post Richard. These reports importantly raise concerns/questions relating to the number of youth in the Pacific (the 'youth bulge'), the challenges Pacific youth continue to face, and the policy options for addressing these. With regard to the latter, it is understandable that efforts be made to increase youth access to employment and education but I was disappointed with how little emphasis was placed on the importance of increasing youth and women's access to quality SRHR services, particularly basic rights based family planning services. It strikes me as concerning that there is so little discussion about the link between Pacific women's wanted fertility rates and unmet need for contraception and the Pacific 'youth bulge'. Further, that this link does not more strongly feed into the recommended policy responses of these reports. If Pacific women (particularly young adolescent women) continue to be unable to realise their fertility desires, a basic human right, the Pacific will continue to face the social and economic challenges associated with youth bulges and it's more likely that the next State of Pacific Youth report will again note 'the situation of young people in the Pacific... has changed little'. I'd be interested in any thoughts / comments.

My apologies for not returning to this sooner as I have been undertaking fieldwork in Indonesian schools and districts. There are three different issues that should worry us about this aid modality in Indonesian education, both in relation to the completed AIBEP and what is now planned by Australia. First, is the question of whether school construction support is justifiable in Indonesia at all at its present stage of development. Is Indonesia really unable to fund school construction from its own budget when, for example, it allocates so much of its budget to subsidising the sale of fuel? A convincing case that school construction is an effective way to assist in educational development has not been demonstrated. Neither has the case for the significant amount of funding to be provided. Even if such case can be made, should Australia be spending money on an activity that is not sustainable? The Independent Completion Report (ICR) you refer to provides a clear warning that school construction may not be sustainable: "Maintenance of new school facilities and provision of budgets that can cover this together with teaching materials and books remains a concern." (p.iii) The second issue is one of how donors and the government of Indonesia can reliably know where these new school assets are actually needed. The poor quality of Indonesian data for educational planning is widely understood to be an impediment to good planning. Only now are some districts and provinces beginning to get a reasonably accurate understanding of the educational assets they have, their school demographic data and therefore their needs. This understanding is occurring through aid-supported data management tools and analytical skills development. So, how can AusAID have reliably known where to build new schools to meet actual needs in the past? The third issue of concern is the ICR itself. I am not convinced that the ICR on the Indonesia Basic Education Program is 'compelling evidence' at all. Evidence, yes, but is it compelling? The publicly available ICR documents on the AusAID website show why this is an issue; the documents paint a clear picture of the tight time frames, over-management of the evaluation process by AusAID, complex terms of reference that run to 11 pages, and firm editorial control. The documents raise serious questions about true 'independence'. This is not to question, in any sense at all, the integrity and hard work of the independent evaluators who were so pressed for time in the evaluation that they were only able to visit 11 schools (out of a construction total of 2014), but rather the bureaurcratic environment in which they operated that lead to the finished ICR. That the claimed evidence for implementation through govermment working 'very well' may not be the good evidence we would wish, is flagged by these remarks in the ICR: "An issue raised by MoNE and some development partners for future education programs was whether more emphasis should be given to refurbishment of existing schools rather than constructing new schools. Indonesia has approximately one million classrooms, with 30-50% of these in need of repairs or refurbishment. The cost to refurbish schools is approximately 55% of the cost to construct new schools. AusAID and other development partners need to examine whether rebuilding of schools nationwide, and extending facilities by adding laboratories and libraries, would have a greater impact than expanding the number of schools (p.iii)" "It is understood that there has been no formal review of the structural design to confirm extent of earthquake resistance however, the design appears to be more resistant than comparable regional buildings. The use of a standard structural design solution across all regions irrespective of site conditions remains a concern... (p.4)" "School site selection was an issue that led to challenges beyond the anticipated expertise ... With respect to construction criteria only, it appears that sites were often chosen based simply on availability, e.g. the site may have been ‘less desirable’ vacant public land or unproductive land donated by a benefactor. Other factors such as proximity of rivers and main roads need to be considered - for example, at one school site visited it was found that some nearby students did not attend due to an extremely busy highway between. At another site, the new school was located approximately 100 metres off the access road - sites fronting the access road were above flood level, but not the school site; this particular site is flooded with up to two metres depth for seven months of the year. (p.7)" "As noted, some sites were not ideal for school construction. Some exceed minimum allowable slopes; some are adjacent to natural (e.g. abutments) and other manmade hazards (e.g. busy roads). The District was responsible for site preparation prior to construction, but this did not always occur due to limited District financial and human resource capacity. Typically, drainage and essential landscaping to school sites was incomplete at the time the school becomes operational. (p.7)" I do not believe that donors building schools in Indonesia can be justified now, except in disaster recovery situations. It might be good for publicity and it does make schools available for some children, but there is clear evidence from the ICR itself to cast serious doubt on this working "very well": doubts about sustainability are raised; there are doubts whether construction is better than refurbishment; and serious concerns about design and site selection are raised in at least two of the 11 schools visited - a very high proportion indeed. If this is the "best example" of funding to recipient governments then I think we have much to be concerned about.

I have a question that pakistan and USA do not have same objectives as well as same policies towards certain things then how can both hae strategic convergence? Both are deceiving one another and will end up in a mess.

Our backyard or not our backyard? It is indeed a tricky question. I am of the school of thought that NZ's aid should not be so widely dispersed but how/why is a tough qwuestion to answer.

Yeah! I love to read it but the question is, Are we going to achieve these goals? With high levels of political corruption how can rural people benefit from all these projects coming up?

Thanks Derek. I agree insomuch as that I think that, if migration were to be on the table in these agreements, then there really would be development ramifications. cheers Terence