Auditing firms KPMG, Crown Agents and PricewaterhouseCooper have been asked to help speed up the release of funds from the Global Fund (GF) to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
Speaking at the International Union for TB and Lung Diseases organised World Conference on Lung Health, Richard Feachem, executive director of the GF said these firms would be asked to act as local fund agents (LFAs) to decrease front-end bureaucracy and paperwork, while tightening the monitoring of program effectiveness.
The GF was set up at the initiative of the UN and is funded by G-8 nations, multilateral institutions and corporates.
It raised $2.1 billion last year. In the first round of funding that came in April 2002, India got around $9 million to fight TB over the next five years.
The new system is expected to standardise and simplify procedures required to quickly disburse funds, while establishing robust and reliable systems for monitoring of financial and programmatic accountability.
While the first round of funding was announced in April this year, the funds have only just begun to trickle in, said Bobby John, India representative of the Massive Effort Campaign.
