In November 2005, the Council of Ministers approved the new Portuguese strategy for development cooperation entitled “A strategic vision for Portuguese cooperation.” This strategy includes a commitment to the MDGs as one of the five guiding principles of development cooperation. This new strategy is a welcome step forward, but the OECD notes that Portugal faces significant implementation challenges in reorienting its aid programme in line with this strategy. These overall challenges include managing the increase in aid flows in line with commitments while strengthening the poverty focus of aid.

The OECD notes that increasing the poverty focus of Portugal’s aid requires the development of a systematic and consistent approach to poverty reduction based on poverty needs assessments, and an adjustment of policies and practices across the board.

In order to implement its new cooperation strategy, the OECD suggests that Portugal undertake a strategic review of ODA allocations, develop and implement a multi-year, results-based action plan to implement the new development strategy, and adopt methodological innovations to better link development objectives, inputs, outputs and results. Such a multi-year programming process would increase the predictability of aid for both partner countries and implementing agencies.