The cross-government Prosperity Fund

The Prosperity Fund needs to continue to improve its systems and processes to support the pace and scale of delivery.

  1. Status: Completed
  2. Published: 7 February 2017
  3. Type: Rapid review
  4. Subject: Trade and economic development, UK aid funds
  5. Assessment: Unrated
  6. Lead commissioner: Alison Evans

Summary

The Prosperity Fund is a cross-government aid fund, under the authority of the National Security Council, that promotes economic reform and growth in developing countries. With a planned budget of £1.3 billion between 2016 and 2021, the Fund was a major new addition to the UK aid programme and part of a wider rebalancing towards economic development. It is intended that it will contribute to a reduction of poverty in developing countries and also create opportunities for international business, including UK companies.

We conducted a rapid review of the Prosperity Fund to assess what progress has been made in putting in place the governance arrangements, systems and procedures required for the Fund to allocate resources effectively and with good value for money.

ICAI rapid reviews are short, real-time reviews of an emerging issue or area of UK aid spending. While we examine the evidence to date and comment on issues of concern, our rapid reviews are not intended to reach final conclusions on performance or impact, and are therefore not scored. We do make five recommendations for improvements.

Timeline

Approach

Published 15 November 2016

Evidence gathering

Complete

Review publication

Published 7 February 2017

Government response

Published 22 March 2017

Parliamentary scrutiny

IDC hearing 6 December 2017

ICAI follow-up

Published 29 June 2018