Evaluation of Finland’s Aid for Trade

Finland’s Aid for Trade (AFT) projects in the past years have produced results and contributed to impact in specific sectors, in which Finland has competitive advantages and can bring added value. These sectors are water, energy, environment, ICT and innovation, forestry and fisheries.Evaluointiraportti kansi Aid for Trade

pdf Evaluation Aid for Trade (PDF, 272 pages, 343 kb)

Finnfund’s investment portfolio shows good results and impact of most projects on the ground, particularly when measured by employment creation. Finnpartnership has achieved limited impact on the ground in the countries studied. These are findings of a recently completed evaluation of Finland’s Aid for Trade.

The evaluation concludes that many AFT projects have achieved increased involvement of private sector partners in a developing country, but the involvement of Finnish companies in private sector initiatives in the partner countries is still very modest. The AFT Action Plan has not guided implementation of Finnish AFT and programming in partner countries, and has primarily remained an internal MFA instrument.  Also the coordination between project can be improved.

The evaluation analysed performance based on Finland’s second action plan for Aid for Trade for 2012-2015. An important research component was the inclusion of two case studies on Finnfund and Finnpartnership.

The evaluation was conducted by FCG Finnish Consulting Group Ltd. The international evaluation team was led by Frans van Gerwen. Karsten Weitzenegger served as international entrepreneurship expert of the evaluation team.

Source: Ulkoministeriö