PHA-Exchange> DEVELOPMENT:Major Donors Drop Assistance

[claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn]

 from francoise barten <francoiseb at gmail.com> -----
http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=37202

*DEVELOPMENT:
Major Donors Drop Assistance*
Mattias Creffier (excepts)

*PARIS, Apr 3 (IPS) - Official development assistance from the world's major
donors fell 5.1 percent in 2006 compared to 2005, the OECD said Tuesday.*

With fewer debt relief operations scheduled for 2007, donor countries should
start looking for significant other means of development assistance if they
want to keep their promises towards poor countries.

The drop in official development assistance (ODA) to 103.9 billion dollars
in 2006 had been predicted by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of
the OECD. In 2005, debt relief operations for Iraq and Nigeria boosted ODA
artificially to its highest level ever at 106.6 billion dollars. Under OECD
rules, donor countries can count cancelled debts as development assistance.

In 2006, donors wrote off a little over 3 billion dollars for Iraq and
nearly 11 billion dollars for Nigeria.

Aid to sub-Saharan Africa increased only 2 percent, excluding debt relief
for Nigeria. At the 2005 summit of G8 leaders in Gleneagles in Scotland, the
leaders of the world's largest economies and the EU committed themselves to
doubling their aid to Africa between 2004 and 2010. The G8 is a group of the
eight most industrialised countries (the United States, Canada, Britain,
Italy, France, Germany, Japan and Russia).


Other forms of aid fell 1.8 percent last year.

The general picture is broadly static at a time one would hope to see a
move forward.

In 2006, the net ODA by the United States was 22.7 billion dollars, a fall
of 20 percent mainly due to the fact that in 2005 the United States forgave
all its outstanding debt with Iraq.

The 15 'old' EU countries accounted for 59 billion dollars in aid. This
amount represented 0.43 percent of the EU-15 Gross National Income (GNI),
surpassing the 0.39 percent target the EU had set itself for 2006 at the
2002 UN conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico.

Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain failed to meet the target of 0.33 percent
GNI set for individual countries.

The 2.7 percent increase in EU-15 ODA is again mainly due to debt relief
grants. Discounting debt operations, the EU aid effort represents only
0.36percent of GNI.

CONCORD, the European NGO confederation for relief and development, says ODA
from the EU is inflated by 11 billion euros (14.7 billion dollars) of debt
relief, and also by expenses for educating foreign students in Europe
(1.6billion dollars) and housing refugees in Europe (1.3 billion dollars). All 
these expenses detract from the aid resources intended to be available for 
developing countries.

According to the NGO confederation, only 0.3 percent of EU GNI has been
spent on genuine aid. The worst culprits for blowing up aid figures in 2006
were Austria and France (57 and 52 percent respectively), followed by Italy
(44 percent), Germany (35 percent), Britain (28 percent) and Belgium (25
percent).



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