Madam Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia, on Thursday said in Accra that timing and urgency of aid are the most difficulties her country was facing in its relationship with development partners. Contributing to the Third High Level Aid Effectiveness Forum on Thursday in Accra, the Liberian President told delegates that another difficulty towards the reconstruction of Liberia was the alignment of aid with country systems. “We have made some progress in alignment in terms of what our development vision is, but we still have a challenge because we have to integrate donors contributions with our budget programmes,” President Johnson-Sirleaf said. She said how to understand the time frame for donors and partners was crucial and noted also that, as partners look at the process for contract bidding, it was also imperative to focus on the results of implementation, which often seemed to be downplayed. The Liberian President announced that her country had completed its first phase of the Home-Pledged Poverty Reduction Strategy and were at the decision point of the Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative. She said these in her opening statements during the Ministerial discussion on the topic: “New development challenges and new development partnerships – the relevance of and urgency of aid reform. Making brief statements on the topic, Mr. Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, stressed that national ownership of development programmes should be matched with transparency and accountability. He said as development partners called for increased aid and aid effectiveness, it was also important to identify hunger and malnutrition that confronts the world today as something that would not go away soon. Mr Zoellick said that meant the World Food Programme (WFP) would require more resources for food aid in the coming years and called for expansion in food production. He said more aid must be channelled through nation's budget to build ownership of developments programmes in recipient nations saying “donors need to be more flexible. Let us also make greater use of multi-donor trust funds”. Mr. Kemal Dervis, the UNDP Administrator expressed worry that ODA had declined by about 13 per cent in the last decade despite the massive call for increase aid. “You can't promise new monies and when you add up the total, somehow, it diminishes,” he said donors but reminded the world on the need to integrate aid, climate change and energy issues in the discussion to the new development challenges. The Accra Forum, which ends on Thursday would adopt the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) on aid effectiveness. Source: GNA