PANEL 7.2 TRACKING FINANCIAL ALLOCATIONS TO NUTRITION: GUATEMALA’S EXPERIENCE
JESÚS BULUX, OTTO VELASQUEZ, CECIBEL JUÁREZ, CARLA GUILLÉN, AND FERNANDO ARRIOLA C
hronic malnutrition in Guatemala, which affects 49.8 percent of children under age five (Guatemala, Ministry of Health 2009), is one of the main factors limiting the country’s economic and social development. Eliminating hunger is a key objective of the current gov- ernment’s Agenda for Change, and this goal takes concrete form in the Zero Hunger Pact Plan (PPH0). The PPH0 connects the interven- tions, programs, plans, and projects of various public institutions in the field of food and nutrition security, with a special emphasis on the capacities of local governments. To assess whether financial resources are being focused on high-priority actions, Guatemala has devel- oped a well-functioning monitoring system. Monitoring financial resources starts with
planning. This requires financial resources to be linked to the goods or services provided. In 2014, the National Food Security and Nutri- tion Secretariat, together with the Ministry of Finance, developed a tool to enable ministers, secretaries, and managers to understand the connection between their budgets and the targets that their respective institutions are responsible for attaining. The relevant min- istries are accountable to the National Food Security and Nutrition Council.
The Council has actively addressed mat- ters of coordination and joint planning that were long treated passively. It holds special sessions with departments to verify compli- ance with the targets. Coordination between institutions has helped better define targets and clarified investments made at the local level. The Council’s requirement of local-level verification has strengthened the participation of local organizations.
Several factors have contributed to the success of the tracking system: • strong political commitment from all stakeholders, and especially the govern- ment, increasing the chances of continuity across election cycles;
• strong coordination within and between government institutions, the private sector, and development partners;
• an implementation plan clearly linking tar- gets and budget allocations;
• continuous monitoring of implementation at national and local levels;
• creation of technical groups to support technical and financial management in key institutions;
• local (municipal) monitoring of progress toward goals; and
• measures to ensure greater openness in public spending, such as the site www.
guatecompras.gt.
Guatemala now has (1) a food- and nutrition-security budget broken down by institution, program component, and activ- ity; (2) clear responsibilities, with particu- lar officials accountable for their respective targets and associated budgets; (3) a simple implementation tool that makes it possible to understand public spending at different levels;1
and (4) good coordination between institutions (in 2013 the government worked with 11 institutions on financial monitoring and tracking). Guatemala’s establishment of a function- ing monitoring system was designed to over- come the technical challenges of connecting different tracking systems, and it required a sustained period of investment, innovation, relationship building, and commitment. Tech- nical problem solving was important, but so were focus, patience, and diplomacy.
Gulf States; and foundations such as the Wellcome Trust and the Tata Trusts. Future Global Nutrition Reports will cast the net wider to track these resources.
Third, all of the donors included in this report have vastly
different project life cycles, documentation standards, nomen- clature, and financial tracking and reporting systems. This com- plicates any attempt to directly compare donors. For example, one might expect the report to focus solely on disbursements, but for several donors, commitments are a more accurate indi- cator of organizational commitment to nutrition, representing new nutrition investments approved each year that will then be disbursed over the next five or more years.
Fourth, the protocol (developed and tested by the SUN Donor Partner Network) for estimating nutrition-sensitive investments was reported by several donors as onerous (especially for the largest donors doing the most nutrition-sensitive work) and highly subjective.4
Broadly speaking, systems are not in place to easily
track nutrition-sensitive commitments, and establishing them will take time. We suspect this is the case for all nutrition investors. The SUN Donor Partner Network is working to find an approach with lower transactions costs (SUN Donor Network 2013).
Fifth, with a small number of donors and only two data points, 2010 and 2012, it is easy to overinterpret the data.
Finally, there are methods gaps. For example, there is a need
to track resource flows to overweight and obesity interventions, and a methodology needs to be identified that will facilitate the reporting of these data.
The data
The report draws on financial commitment and disbursement data that were estimated by 13 donors for 2010 and 2012 for nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive expenditure categories. The 13 donors are Australia, Canada, the European Union (EU), France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland,5
the ACTIONS & ACCOUNTABILITY TO ACCELERATE THE WORLD’S PROGRESS ON NUTRITION 49
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