With the United States facing increasing budget pressures down the road, now is the time for reforms to make foreign aid more effective Congressman Ted Yoho told an audience of development professionals.

While there is a closely guarded process within the administration to make changes at the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department, Congress is also working to help set an agenda of reform for foreign aid. Yoho, a Republican from Florida, has been a central figure in some of those efforts, both as co-chair for the Congressional Caucus for Effective Foreign Assistance, and as a key sponsor of several pieces of legislation aimed at tackling major challenges.

What’s needed, he said, is more accountability and efficiency, giving more funding to what’s working, increasing private sector engagement and working to wean countries off aid and into trading partners for the U.S. Yoho cited both the Millenium Challenge Corp. and the Overseas Private Investment Corp. as examples of agencies that have good models and should be emulated.

Read the full article by Adva Saldinger about foreign aid from Devex International Development