•  rio de janeiro
• Tuesday, February 01, 2011
• Inter Press Service

Mothers' milk banks that are helping reduce infant mortality in Guatemala and are starting to be set up in Africa as well form part of the numerous social technologies developed by Brazil that are driving the fast growth of its international development cooperation.

The total funds dedicated annually to international organisations, technical and humanitarian assistance, and scholarships for foreign students grew 129 percent between 2005 and 2009, from 158 million dollars to 362 million dollars, according to the first official report on Brazilian Cooperation for International Development. That is still not much, a mere 0.02 percent of GDP, said Guilherme Schmitz, one of the authors of the study, carried out by Brazil's Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA).

But South America's giant is just now gaining stature as a donor country. And as a developing nation, it does not have a target to live up to, he told IPS -- unlike industrialised countries, which have pledged to give 0.7 percent of GDP to official development aid.

Moreover, the cancellation of debt owed by poor countries was not taken into account in the estimate of Brazil's total cooperation, he pointed out. If it was, he said, as it is in the accounts of other countries, the total amount of development cooperation would be significantly higher.

When it is factored in, humanitarian aid to Haiti, after the devastating earthquake that claimed as many as 300,000 lives a year ago, will also expand the 2010 total.

But the largest contributions go to international bodies, including United Nations agencies like the U.N. Refugee Agency, and at the regional level, various development banks and funds. This category accounts for 76 percent of Brazil's development cooperation.

One of the biggest contributions goes to the Structural Convergence and Institutional Strengthening Fund (FOCEM) set up by the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) trade bloc. FOCEM receives more than 30 percent of the funds that the Brazilian government contributes to international bodies.

FOCEM was established in 2004 to bolster development in the bloc's smaller partners, Paraguay and Uruguay, and in poorer areas in all of the member countries, to reduce asymmetries between the partners.

Brazil's international humanitarian assistance increased 90-fold between 2005 and 2009 -- from 488,000 dollars to 43.5 million dollars -- but this country still accounts for only 5.5 percent of the global total, according to the study presented Jan. 12 by the government of Dilma Rousseff. Lately Brazil has provided that aid directly to countries hit by catastrophes, with only a small part still channelled through multilateral bodies.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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