The phrase "agencies were not able" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing the limitations or failures of agencies to accomplish a specific task or goal.
Example: "Due to unforeseen circumstances, agencies were not able to respond to the emergency in a timely manner."
Alternatives: "agencies could not" or "agencies were unable to".
This disparity created tension, and agencies were not able to divert any resources to right this imbalance.
UN agencies were not able to provide her with medicine.
In one large camp, a water source maintained by aid agencies had broken down, but aid agencies were not able for several days to safely reach the site.
Although government agencies weren't able to provide figures for the total number of foreigners in India, the Ministry of Home Affairs offered numbers that paint a stark portrait.
While relief agencies are not able to estimate the number of North Koreans who may have already died, officials are forming a broader picture of the disaster facing the country of 24 million people after two years of floods and two months of severe drought.
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency was not able to provide a breakdown of incidents by farm type.
If a donor agency is not able to keep its side of the bargain, why should the recipient?
Part of the problem was that the mapping agency was not able to handle the digital river of data that Space Imaging was sending.
This also means that the agency is not able to say whether it is making a profit on the business, though it expects its investment funds to be self-financing by 2015.
Given the amount of resistance, the agency was not able to justify scaling back coverage, said Dr. Sean Tunis, a former Medicare official who is director of a nonprofit group, the Center for Medical Technology Policy, aimed at evaluating new technology.
The agency was not able to duplicate that fire and said that "no real-world crash data has been reported which indicates that a Chevrolet Volt has suffered a battery-induced fire event either immediately after a crash or for an extended time period after a crash".
