"Technical assistance is defined as the transfer or adaptation of ideas, knowledge, practices, technologies, or skills to foster economic development. The purposes of Bank technical assistance are classified as follows: (a) Policy development, (b) Institutional development, (c) Capacity building, and (d) Project or programme support." This definition for technical assistance from the World Bank (1991 a) report of the technical assistance review task force is similar, if somewhat more compact, to definitions given by other agencies with one qualification. Many agencies call the (a), (b), and (c) above technical cooperation and only include (d) (or a variation thereof) under the rubric technical assistance. That is, they distinguish between activities whose main contribution is to design or implement a given project or programme and those which are primarily trying to increase the level of knowledge, skills, technological comprehension, or productive aptitudes of residents of a developing country. In this report we shall use the all-encompassing World Bank definition of technical assistance - also used by AID and CIDA - unless otherwise noted.<sup>2</sup> With regards to types of TA, the most commonly used distinction is between freestanding TA and project related TA. Project or investment related TA is meant to support the execution of a capital project. Free-standing TA is anything else, although it is usually related to policy reform, institutional development, or capacity building. Unfortunately, many donors do not statistically differentiate the two, so it is difficult to determnine what portion of TA falls under each broad category.<sup>3</sup> The question of what is actually counted as TA, versus capital assistance, is a more difficult one. In general, however, the following rules of thumb apply. Large capital projects and feasibility studies are not included. However, specific training components attached to large capital projects are TA. On the other hand, small capital projects associated with a free-standing TA, such as renovating a building or supplying computers, are generally included in TA. Unfortunately, some agencies do not make any statistical distinction between TA and capital assistance and others just refer to the financing of personnel (or "experts") as TA and anything else as capital assistance.<sup>4</sup> Nevertheless, our analysis in section III will focus on projects for which the above distinctions are made.

# I(b): Trends in Technical Assistance

While we have some data on technical assistance provided by the World Bank, we only have detailed data on technical assistance in the form of grants. Total current dollar TA grants 2 Berg (1993: 42-47) goes into considerable detail on the definitions of TA and TC used by different agencies.

3 A differentiation is often made between "soft" and "hard" TA, where the latter is for specific investment needs and the former for more general purposes, including institutional development. Most free-standing TA is of the soft variety, while TA attached to projects may be of either sort.

4 Berg (1993: 48-52) discusses the distinction between capital assistance and technical assistance in detail.

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