I think the writer is using attribution as an insider word used to describe the process of attributing credit for the impact made in development funding and programming. If you look on page 19 of the working paper http://www.cgdev.org/doc/events/12.14.06/Global Fund Transcr... (about the Global Fund) you will see the director's comment about the difficulty of attributing impact. He says "For example, if a recipient came back to us and said, using PEPFAR money and Global Fund money, these are our impact results, and 60 percent of the money was from PEPFAR and 40% of the money is from the Global Fund, so we're going to invent the reality that 40% of the impact was Global Fund's and 60% of the impact was PEPFAR's, just prorata on the input of money, we'd say fine, it makes common sense... We certainly don't want expensive inquiries to attribute impact to Global Fund finance rather than someone else's finance." There is currently a lot of talk about improving analysis in order to redirect funding from programs that have little or no impact to programs that have greater impact. Attribution is an attempt to see what funding is giving results.

I have a feeling that as in many of these international organizations, you may be dealing with what is already a translation, and maybe the translator for some reason thought both words were equally good and used them in this way. To me it's synonymous with allocation in this context.

I think is this context the agency supplying the funds may be asking the receipient, (since donor funds may be comingeled in a common fund from may sources), to either provide attribution (to us the funders), or a specific allocation (how the funds will be used) or anticipated (how the funds will be most probably used, if not yet allocated) - in the detailed budget information.

Attribution to the donor may be an acceptable way of detailing for the budget in lieu of allocation or anticipated use. If there is a specific allocation or anticipated use, then that attribution would not be necessary.