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139. Expenditure for international personnel constituted the largest component of the recorded expenditure for capacity building, amounting to some 34 million US dollars in 2002 representing 12.7 per cent of total reported expenditure or some 30 per cent of expenditure on capacity building. Altogether some 740 international staff were reported to have been employed. Of these about 40 per cent were employed by the multilateral programs and about 30 per cent each by bilateral programs and NGOs. 140. About half the experts serving in multilateral and bilateral programs had a long-term employment while practically all those serving in NGO projects had long-term assignments. 141. Of the experts employed by multilateral and bilateral agencies some 8 per cent served as project managers or equivalent, some 50 per cent served as technical advisors and experts and about 25 per cent served as short term consultants. On average some 50 per cent of international experts in the bilateral and multilateral programs work as technical advisers/experts/specialists (see table 31). The share is lower for UN agencies (less than 40 per cent) and higher for other multilateral (some 55 per cent) and bilateral donors (close to 60 per cent). About eight per cent of the international experts work as program/project directors/managers/coordinators. Both bilateral and UN agency projects use about 30 per cent of the international experts as consultants. Other multilateral agencies use consultants much less (slightly over 10 per cent of the experts). 142. Given that some 28 per cent of bilateral and multilateral projects did not report employing international personnel, the question is whether this is due to the nature of the respective projects or whether it is an instance of inadequate reporting. 143. The role of the international experts is to fill existing capacity gaps in the Cambodian public service system but also to transfer their expertise to their Cambodian counterparts. Over time this should allow the counterparts to take over the functions now filled by international experts. Given the severe capacity gaps that exist in the civil service this can be expected to take a considerable time. Moreover, during the interview process questions were raised whether the international experts devoted sufficient efforts to make themselves redundant by transferring their expertise to their counterparts. If this were true, it would lengthen the transition process. 144. Given the lack of data, it was not possible to ascertain whether the sectoral orientation of the international experts (and the projects with which they were associated) corresponded to the priority needs of Cambodia as defined by the Government or whether they corresponded more to the interests of the respective donors. 145. The estimates of the Ministry of Economy and Finance show that the total expenditure on wages and salaries in 2002 for all personnel in the civil administration was less than 78 million US dollars. The civil administration includes in addition to the civil service, the National Assembly and various Councils. It is interesting to note that a crude extrapolation of the survey data indicates that the total costs of international personnel involved in the implementation of the ODA supported projects may be as high as 50-70 million US dollars. |
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