They admit it, but they won't change!

Speaking to the Financial Times on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings this weekend, François Bourguignon, the bank's chief economist, said a long-running debate about whether aid was effective had led to an emphasis on delivering aid to countries with stable governments and ignoring others."The community has to some extent been obsessed by the effectiveness of aid and there has been a move towards making aid selective and allocating it to countries where aid would work. But in making progress in that direction, we simply forgot countries where governance is weak," he said, adding that the challenge now was to help fragile states.