ROUND FIVE DECISIONS

Author:

Bernard Rivers

Article Type:

Article Number: 4

ABSTRACT A detailed listing and analysis is provided of which Round 5 proposals have been approved.

Based on advise from the Technical Review Panel (TRP), the Board divides eligible proposals into five Categories, as follows:

• Category 1: Approved proposals requiring no or minor clarifications, which need to be provided within 4 weeks and then given a final approval by the TRP Chair and/or Vice-Chair.

• Category 2A: Proposals that are provisionally approved subject to the required clarifications being provided within a limited timeframe (6 weeks for the applicant to respond to the TRP queries, 4 months to obtain the final TRP approval should further clarifications be requested). The primary reviewer and secondary reviewer as well as TRP Chair and /or Vice-Chair need to give final approval.

• Category 2B: Similar to Category 2A, but regarded as relatively weak, on grounds of technical merit and/or issues of feasibility and likelihood of effective implementation. The TRP took no account of the applicant country’s income level, nor of burden of disease nor of any factors other than technical merit and feasibility in grading a proposal as Category 2B. In other words, these proposals differ from Category 2A proposals only in that they have more technical weaknesses, and/or more questions as to effective implementation, and/or more required clarifications. It is important to note, however, that on balance all of the Category 2B proposals were regarded as recommended for funding, and the TRP believes that the weaknesses and clarifications could be addressed within the timeframes provided for Category 2A proposals.

• Category 3: Not approved in their present form, but applicants are encouraged to submit an improved proposal in some future Round.

• Category 4: Rejected.

If the Fund had sufficient pledges for 2005 to cover the cost of all Category 1, 2A and 2B proposals, it would have approved all of them at last week’s meeting, subject to the applicants responding acceptably to the TRP’s requests for clarification that will be sent to the applicants.

However, given that the Fund currently has insufficient pledges to cover all the Category 1, 2A and 2B proposals, the board agreed to proceed as follows, using a procedure specified at an earlier board meeting:

• Category 1 proposals are approved.

• Category 2A and 2B proposals are given a “Composite Index” of between 1 and 8 points, as follows:
• If the country has a “very high” disease burden, it receives 4 points, and otherwise it receives 1 point.
• In addition, if the country is “low-income” it receives 4 points, and if it is “lower-middle income” it receives 2 points. (“Upper-middle income” countries receive 0 extra points.)

Proposals were ranked by Category and then, for Categories 2A and 2B, they were sub-ranked by Composite Index. This led to them being grouped as in Table 5, below.

The Fund currently has enough pledges to pay for the first three groups. These have been labeled by GFO as “Immediately Approved: A, B and C”. Proposals that fall into these three groups are approved, subject to satisfactory responses being provided to the TRP queries.

The Fund does not currently have sufficient pledges to pay for proposals in the next eight groups, labeled by GFO as “Provisionally Approved D, E, F, G, H, I, J and K”. When the Fund received pledges sufficient to cover each additional group (in the order shown below), the board will approve those proposals by email.

The Secretariat will start working immediately with all provisionally approved applicants on dealing with TRP queries and negotiating grant agreements. If all those activities have been completed before pledges and actual cash contributions have been received, the actual signing of grant agreements will have to be put on hold.

However, provisionally approved proposals for which insufficient pledges are received by the end of June 2006 will lose their provisional approval and will be treated as if they had not been approved.

Table 5: Round 5 results by Category

Decision	Explanation	Number of proposals	Budget Years 1-2	Budget Years 1-5
Immediately Approved: A	Category 1	5	$43,310,437	$98,935,651
Immediately Approved: B	Category 2A, Composite Index 8	18	$290,762,706	$728,609,400
Immediately Approved: C	Category 2A, Composite Index 6	3	$48,003,918	$149,563,776
Subtotal: All “Immediately Approved” proposals	26	$382,077,061	$977,108,827
Provisionally approved: D	Category 2A, Composite Index 5	12	$133,276,403	$345,346,815
Provisionally approved: E	Category 2A, Composite Index 4	2	$9,529,070	$24,888,718
Provisionally approved: F	Category 2A, Composite Index 3	13	$92,575,047	$165,266,161
Provisionally approved: G	Category 2B, Composite Index 8	4	$87,358,034	$207,352,569
Provisionally approved: H	Category 2B, Composite Index 7	1	$3,269,731	$6,623,560
Provisionally approved: I	Category 2B, Composite Index 6	1	$6,501,141	$21,232,348
Provisionally approved: J	Category 2B, Composite Index 5	2	$3,356,219	$6,868,700
Provisionally approved: K	Category 2B, Composite Index 3	2	$7,673,482	$19,814,848
Subtotal: All “Provisionally Approved” proposals	37	$343,539,127	$797,393,719
Total: All “Immediately Approved” plus “Provisionally Approved” proposals	63	$725,616,188	$1,774,502,546
Not approved: L	Category 3	120	$2,266,242,296	$5,096,656,571
Not approved: M	Category 4	19	$306,210,534	$750,510,205
Subtotal: All “Not Approved” proposals	139	$2,572,452,830	$5,847,166,776
GRAND TOTAL	202	$3,298,069,018	$7,621,669,322

Table 6: Round 5 results by country

 

Information on Round 5 grants is also available on the Global Fund web site at www.theglobalfund.org/en/about/board/eleventh.

 

An applicant may appeal the board’s decision if the applicant submitted an eligible proposal for a particular component in both Round 4 and Round 5 and was not approved in either case. The appeal must show that the recommendation made by the TRP regarding the Round 5 proposal was based on a “significant and obvious” error. The appeal must be filed with the Secretariat no later than 28 days from when the applicant receives written notice of the board’s Round 5 decision. For further details regarding the appeals procedure, see www.theglobalfund.org/en/apply/proposals/appeals.