FIGURE 6. P rogramme expenditure by funding source and year (US$ million) $12 $2.38
$3.18
$10 $0.65
$0.38
$8 $6 $0.37
$0.36
$0.65
$0.44
$1.91
$1.59
$1.72
$2.13
2017
2018
2019
2020
$4 $2 $0
Vertical trust funds Regular resources
Bilateral/multilateral funds
Source: Atlas project data, Power BI, December 2020
Union (the Spotlight Regional Initiative), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) (BLIC regional project), and the Global Fund (the Global Fund/CVC-COIN regional project). The MCO is currently redoubling its resource mobilization efforts in the context of COVID-19, working with donors (such as the European Union and Canada) to repurpose approximately $350,000 of funding to support the COVID response,113 particularly towards vulnerable groups impacted by the pandemic. Recently, the MCO had important breakthroughs in fundraising, with the Government of Jamaica seeking $400,000 from the Caribbean Development Bank for the Rejuvenating Communities project. While not government cost-sharing per se, this could be a great opportunity for UNDP to demonstrate its value addition in project implementation, which could eventually lead to more eagerness in co-funding and cost-sharing, or at least similar encouragement from the government for international financial institutions and donors to consider UNDP as a partner. 113
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Despite this advance, during the programme cycle UNDP encountered significant challenges, the most important being that no agreement was reached in terms of government cost-sharing of UNDP programmes and projects. This was mainly due to the persistent perception of UNDP as a donor agency with a history of funding development projects. While the government is aware of UNDP’s positioning as an international development partner rather than a donor, it seems that government cost-sharing is not forthcoming in the near future. Another important challenge is the MCO’s limited financial and human resource capacity that restricts its ability to invest seed funds in strategic initiatives and pilots, explore innovative programming opportunities, and engage in robust and strategic resource mobilization actions to attract new funds. The MCO is aware of its financial challenges and shortcomings and is finalizing its new resource mobilization strategy, which aims to address the challenges while taking into account: the office’s multicountry nature; the persistent perception of UNDP as a donor hindering efforts to obtain government cost-sharing; upper-middle to high-income status of the countries covered, coupled with dwindling ODA; and lack of funding for other countries, as the MCO only receives core funds for Jamaica. The draft resource mobilization strategy lays out a comprehensive vision and actions to target different funding sources and partnerships and identifies innovative financing mechanisms, such as crowdfunding and social and development impact bonds that it intends to explore. While the implementation of the resource mobilization strategy might help UNDP improve its financial standing and diversify and increase its resources, analysis of the context and responses from stakeholders indicate that resource mobilization will continue to be challenging, as the above-mentioned obstacles are not easy to overcome, especially with UNDP’s limited human resource capacity. They will also require significant investment in targeted strategic communication, and advocacy and support from the Regional Bureau.
Mini-ROAR on COVID response.
INDEPENDENT COUNTRY PROGRAMME EVALUATION: JAMAICA
