From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Prepositioning International Food Aid 

Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Tom Melito, Director,
International Affairs and Trade

Related GAO Work: GAO-14-277: International Food Aid: Prepositioning
Speeds Delivery of Emergency Aid, but Additional Monitoring of Time
Frames and Costs is Needed 
 
Released: March 2014

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[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and
information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's March
2014. To expedite the delivery of emergency food aid to recipient
countries, food can be ordered before it is requested and prepositioned
in warehouses in or near regions with historically high needs. A team
led by Tom Melito, a director in GAO's International Affairs and Trade
team, recently examined prepositioning in food aid procurement. GAO's
Sarah Kaczmarek sat down with Tom to talk about what they found.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] Does prepositioning emergency food aid cut down on
delivery time?

[ Tom Melito: ] We found that the standard process takes more than four
months. Prepositioning can save from one to two months from that
four-month period.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] And how does that work?

[ Tom Melito: ] There are two ways that prepositioning can help. First,
we are putting food in overseas warehouses close to where the food is
needed; that saves delivery time. Also, the prepositioning warehouse
gives us the opportunity to redirect food on the ocean from the prepo
site to where it's needed.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] And is it more expensive than standard shipping?

[ Tom Melito: ] Prepo does cost, we think, more than 20 million dollars
a year and that's because of two things; first, you're adding a second
leg of overseas shipping from the prepo site to the new destination;
second of all, you have to actually pay for the storage at these
overseas warehouses.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] Has USAID evaluated how well prepositioning is
working?

[ Tom Melito: ] Unfortunately they have not. We found that they've been
using it for several years but they never really looked in any depth on
how it was working, even though it had a goal of saving time, our report
is the first to actually demonstrate that.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] Given that, what does GAO recommend?

[ Tom Melito: ] GAO has a couple of recommendations; first, we found
that actually the data that the AID has is actually of poor quality. So
it took us quite a while to get a valid database that we could actually
use. So we want them to improve the data quality. Second, the prepo does
offer great opportunities for saving time but at a cost, so we want them
to actually be very cognizant of this tradeoff and make sure that they
are spending the money where it will save the most time.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] Finally, what do you see as the bottom line of this
report?

[ Tom Melito: ] The bottom line is that there is a tradeoff that you
have to confront when you're using prepo so AID needs monitors to make
sure that it uses scarce government resources in the most productive
way.

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[ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO.gov and be sure to tune into the
next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the Congressional
watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.