Italy: Will Italy’s aid track record be set straight in time for the G8?
Alarming is the term used by Action Aid Italy to describe EU aid figures, released last week by the OECD. Italy shows positive signs but the aid effort must be multiplied, say NGOs
di Staff
?Alarming? is the term used by Action Aid Italy to describe European aid figures, released last week by the Organisation for Economic Coordination and Development (OECD). ?Italy does show that it is beginning to make a qualitative move in the right direction? added Action Aid Italy general secretary Marco De Ponte, ?however it still has a long way to go if it is to meet international objectives. Unless Italy decides to step into a different gear, it won?t make it to the G8 presidency with the right credentials?.
The figures released by the OECD?s Development cooperation directorate, Dac, actually show that Italy is one of the least generous donors only if debt relief figures are not discounted, as they should be when calculating ?real? aid. Action Aid explains that for years public aid figures have been falsified by counting debt relief into the overall aid for development figures (see also ). By discounting debt relief from aid figures, Italy results as the second largest EU donor, after Spain.
Despite these positive signs, Italy?s external aid only amounted to 0.19% of its Gdp in 2007, compared to 0.20% in 2006. Italian vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, Patrizia Sentinelli, declared that these figures are not only ?disappointing? but are also a ?dishonour for a country that has supposedly made fighting poverty, promoting human rights and local development as its priorities?.
The future looks brighter though, as funds allocated to aid at the end of 2007 will mean that 2008 should close with a reassuring 0.28%-0.29%. But even so Italy is still miles behind the 0.33% predicted by the last national financial plan and, in the overall European scheme of things, still a straggler.
?European objectives are still far away,? concludes De Ponte, ?and to reach the 0.7% of Gdp by 2015 targets, Italy will have to really concentrate on fighting poverty in the world. Next year Italy will lead the ?big 8? during the G8 summit and it really can?t afford to arrive without all the right papers?.
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