• by David Cronin (brussels)
• Thursday, February 18, 2010
• Inter Press Service

Promises made by the European Union (EU) on increasing aid to poor countries will be broken this year, according to new data.

In 2005, the 15 governments that comprised the EU before its eastward expansion the previous year undertook to allocate at least 0.51 percent of their gross national income to development aid by 2010. But estimates published Feb. 17 project that the average aid allocation given by these countries this year will be just 0.48 percent of income. As a result, the amount being given by wealthy countries to poor ones will be 21 billion dollars less this year than the amount foreseen in 2005.

Released by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, a grouping of industrialised countries headquartered in Paris, the data indicates that three of the EU's four most populous states will miss their targets. Germany's aid is expected to be 0.4 percent, France 0.46 percent and Italy 0.2 percent. This will leave Britain (0.56 percent) as the only large state exceeding its goal.

While Africa was the main focus of commitments made in 2005, the OECD estimates that this continent will receive just 12 billion dollars of the 25 billion dollars pledged when leaders from the Group of Eight (G8) top industrialised countries met in Gleneagles, Scotland that year. Outside Europe, Japan agreed to give 10 billion dollars in additional development aid between then and 2010, compared to its 2004 level. Yet the latest details made available to the OECD indicate that it was 4 billion dollars shy of this amount in 2008.

Despite the broken promises, the OECD expressed satisfaction that 16 of 30 member countries are honouring their commitments. 'But underperformance by the others, notably Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan and Portugal means overall aid will still fall considerably short of what was promised,' said Eckhard Deutscher, chairman of the OECD's development assistance committee. 'These commitments were made and confirmed repeatedly by heads of government and it is essential that they be met to the full extent.'

The undertakings given by the EU in 2005 were intended to be a significant contribution towards realising the United Nations' millennium development goals of dramatically reducing extreme hardship. The target for greater aid by 2010 was set as an interim one, with the proportion of national income devoted to fighting global poverty supposed to rise further until it hit 0.7 percent in 2015.

Alessandro Bozzini from CONCORD, a coalition of anti-poverty groups, said he was 'alarmed by the fact that some of the EU's biggest economies, including France, Germany and Italy are not meeting their aid commitments.' He argued that the global financial crisis offers no excuse for slowing down aid efforts.

'Instead of showing leadership, they are preventing the targets from being met,' he told IPS. 'This is clearly due to a lack of political will as other large economies, such as the UK and Spain, are making clear progress, despite being severely hit by the crisis.'

Angela Corbalan, a Brussels-based spokeswoman for Oxfam, called on EU development ministers meeting in La Granja, Spain, this week, to agree on a 'catch up' plan so that the momentum lost in recent years can be regained. 'Europe has shown itself to be ahead of the game by setting ambitious aid targets but it's falling behind on its promises,' she said. 'While countries such as the UK, Spain and Belgium are demonstrating it is possible to show development leadership, we still need to see others like France, Germany and Italy stepping up and making their promises a reality.'

A separate OECD report published recently also found that aid frequently remains 'tied' to commercial contracts that bring more benefits to companies in industrialised countries, rather than to the local populations where the aid is delivered. Five years ago, aid donors agreed that their aid should not be linked to commercial considerations when the effectiveness of anti-poverty strategies was addressed at an international conference in Paris.

Yet the OECD paper indicates that progress towards 'untying' aid may not be as impressive as official data indicates. Britain, for example, formally says that none of its overseas aid is driven by domestic economic interests. When a sample of 54 British aid-related contracts was analysed, though, it was found that 44 of them were awarded to British firms.

Bodo Ellmer from the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad) said that tenders for aid-related contracts are 'often just published on special hidden websites' that firms in poor countries have trouble accessing. He added that the value of aid would be 'far higher' if a greater effort is made to ensure that consulting or technical assistance deals go to firms in the recipient countries so that jobs and wealth can be generated there.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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