Guidelines for programmes, projects, country strategic frameworks & hard earmarked multilateral support

Guidelines for Programmes, Projects, Country Strategic Frameworks & Hard Earmarked Multilateral Support

A number of revisions have been made to the bilateral guidelines of February 2022 together with a couple of precisions.

Link to updated document (word).  (Updated: March 2024)

Link to update document (pdf) (Updated: March 2024)

Main updates include:

The Annual Portfolio Performance Report (APPR) is abolished.

The APPR contained units’ reflections regarding achievement of results at portfolio level. The report is no longer considered necessary as the Grant Management Report includes a status on whether results frameworks have been reported on in RFI and overall reflections on the status of achievement of results are included in annual stocktaking reports.

Possibility to use top-up for engagements above DKK 43 million.

If a larger programme that has been appraised and approved according to the guidelines for grants above DKK 43 million, a top up to the same partner will be counted as a new grant. A new grant used as top up will generally follow the usual quality assurance and approval requirements for new grants, but concrete exceptions to this can be made with the approval of the Under-Secretary for Development. Work has been initiated to establish more specific guidance on the possibilities and requirements for top-ups, taking into consideration proportionality relative to the original grant, absorption and management capacity of the partner, etc. This will be added to the guidelines later on.

For country strategic frameworks, reporting on indicators at strategic objective level is abolished.

Recent mid-term reviews have found reporting on indicators at the strategic objective level disproportionately complicated and resource demanding. As the indicators are not directly linked to Danish engagements but also external factors, the value of reporting on these is not considered to be essential to the priorities and management of the Danish engagements. Therefore, the specific reporting on these indicators is abolished. The requirement to report at the overall level in the form of stocktaking reports remain as before.

Using the instrument of Country Strategic Frameworks in other contexts than the country context will explicitly require approval by the State Secretary for Development Policy.

The Country Strategic Frameworks have been developed to enhance holistic thinking a country context level. The instrument has also been used in other contexts with a varying degree of relevance and success. To ensure that it continues to be applied appropriately, an explicit approval by the State Secretary for Development Policy will be necessary before planning to use the instrument in other than country contexts.