Global Fund Launches Round 6
Author:
Bernard Rivers
Article Type:Article Number: 1
ABSTRACT The Global Fund Board has agreed to launch Round 6, despite the very real possibility that there will not be enough money to fund all the proposals submitted that are worthy of approval. Applicants will have until August 3 to submit their proposals.
The Global Fund Board has agreed to launch Round 6, despite the very real possibility that there will not be enough money to fund all the proposals submitted that are worthy of approval. The decision was made at a board meeting that took place on Thursday and Friday.
The Fund will issue its Round 6 “Call for Proposals” some time during May. At that time, the Round 6 Proposal Form and its accompanying Guidelines for Proposals will be published at the Fund’s website. Applicants will then have until August 3 to download these documents and complete and submit their proposals. The Technical Review Panel (TRP) will then review the proposals and make its recommendations to the board. The final decision as to which Round 6 proposals to approve will be made at the next board meeting on November 1-3.
The Board issued an urgent appeal to current and potential donors to expedite and increase their pledges for 2006 and 2007 so that Round 6 can be adequately funded.
As contributions and pledges to the Fund currently stand, there is no money at all for Round 6. This is because all current commitments to the Fund are required to cover Phase 2 renewals of grants that were approved in earlier rounds. Thus, the amount of money that will be available for Round 6 will depend entirely upon the extent to which new pledges for 2006 and the first part of 2007are received from donors to the Fund between now and November. Estimates presented by the Secretariat at the board meeting showed a range of assumptions for new pledges that could lead to between $200 million and a little less than $600 million being available for the first two years of Round 6 grants. (The cost of the first two years of earlier rounds ranged from $576 m. to $1,014 m. In those rounds, no grant that was deemed worthy of approval was turned down because of shortages of money.)
A month ago, the chances seemed low that this board meeting would agree to launch Round 6. But over the past two weeks, certain board members, particularly those representing NGOs, initiated an active discussion on the subject. The USA and Japan would have preferred to delay launching Round 6 until at least November, but the tide started to turn when the UK let it be known that it was fully committed to Round 6. At the board meeting, the resolution to launch Round 6 was proposed by the board member representing West and Central Africa, and was seconded by the board member representing the UK and Australia. No votes were cast against the resolution.
