in the absence of any well laid out strategy the focus of the implementation of the mdg agenda has often been on raising budgetary allocations for education health and other basic social programmes they were meant to be comprehensive and ensure greater coherence between economic and social policies and to serve in positioning donor support behind a nationally defined development strategy however prsps have been criticized for failing in practice to make macroeconomic trade and financial policies integral and explicit parts of a strategy aiming to generate sufficient productive employment reduce poverty and enhance access to social services gottschalk northsouth institute stewart and wang and vos and cabezas