Plan B Forum

Britain is the only major developed economy in the world to significantly increase spending on foreign aid, a report has found.

The UK's aid budget has risen 144 per cent in a decade and Britain is now the only major economy meeting a controversial United Nations target to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on development money every year.

Ahead of the G7 meeting in Japan, which David Cameron is attending, the organisation released an aid spending "progress report" which shows that no other country is even close to meeting the 0.7 per cent target.

It shows that while in the last three years other major countries' spending has flatlined, Britain's has rocketed to over £13billion in 2014 based on current exchange rates.


Conservative MPs reacted angrily to the disclosure and said that Britain’s spending on foreign aid is now “completely unjustifiable”.

They called on Mr Cameron to reconsider whether the target can continue to be met when other countries are so far away from matching Britain's proportion of spending.

The UN has set a target of all major economies spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid every year.

The Government in 2015 passed a law committing Britain to meeting the 0.7 per cent aid spending target despite vociferous opposition from Conservative backbenchers.

It means that Britain is legally required to spend 7p out of every £10 of taxpayers’ money on aid, despite concerns that large portions of the budget are wasted or siphoned off by corrupt governments.

According to the report, Britain in 2014 was spending £13.2billion, a 144 per cent rise since 2004 when the UK spent £5.9billion.

It allows Britain to be just over the 0.7 per cent of GDP target.

In contrast Italy is spending less than £2.7billion on foreign aid, which is not even 0.2 per cent of the country's GDP.

Germany - Europe's biggest economy - is spending just £11.3billion every year on foreign aid, representing just over 0.4 per cent of GDP.

The Unites States spends significantly more on aid than its European counterparts – over £22billion in 2014.

However, its spending has gone up just 68 per cent since 2004 and represents less than 0.2 per cent of GDP. Japan, the host of this week’s G7 summit, spends around £6.3billion on international development, equivalent to around 0.2 per cent of GDP.

However, the report shows that it has increased its aid spending since 2004 by just 4 per cent.

Taken as a whole, European Union member states spend a total of just 0.43 per cent of GDP on aid spending.

Mr Cameron was earlier this month criticised after he was caught on camera describing Nigeria and Afghanistan as “fantastically corrupt” during a private conversation with the Queen– despite the two countries receiving hundreds of millions of pounds in UK aid money every year.

According to aid spending figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Britain spends three times as much per head as the US, whose population of 332million means it gave £61 per person last year.

The UK, with 65million people, gave £188 a head, the figures show.

Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley, said: “We are clearly the mugs of the world. The Prime Minister might think it makes us look compassionate to spend more and more money when we’re in debt - to hand it over to some fantastically corrupt countries around the world. I personally think it makes us look stupid.

“You should spend what you can afford. It is absolutely unjustifiable.”

The Guardian reports that according to the OECD’s new figures, foreign aid for development grew by 6.1 percent in 2013 after falling for two years. Six countries are currently meeting their pledge under the U.N. Millennium Development Goals to spend 0.7 percent of gross national income on aid.

Surprisingly, the world’s most generous country in percentage terms is the United Arab Emirates, whose donations jumped by more than 375 percent last year. This is largely driven by a massive aid package that the UAE signed with Egypt in 2013. The UAE now spends 1.25 percent of its GNI on aid. Norway and Sweden were next.

In dollar amount terms, the U.S. give more than any other country, spending more than $31 billion—though that accounts for a comparatively low 0.19 percent of GDP. (By contrast, Americans believe that as much as 28 percent of U.S. budget goes to foreign aid, which would be something.)

In dollar amount terms, the U.S. give more than any other country, spending more than $31 billion—though that accounts for a comparatively low 0.19 percent of GDP.

Of the $35 billion of total economic aid distributed, almost a quarter of funds went to five countries. Below are the top 5 recipients of economic aid in 2014.

Israel: $3.1 billion

Egypt: $1.5 billion

Afghanistan: $1.1 billion

Jordan: $1.0 billion

Pakistan: $933 million

- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/11/spends-bi ... WR40J.dpuf

“Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing the amounts provided to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War ll. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion in 2003 dollars. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America's entire foreign aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year. This largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain.”

- John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
"The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"

oldr_n_wsr wrote:

In dollar amount terms, the U.S. give more than any other country, spending more than $31 billion—though that accounts for a comparatively low 0.19 percent of GDP.

I am guessing that number omits the military aid (non-dollar military aid) we give the world.

rubato wrote:
And it neglects the cost of the "Pax Americana". The cost that we, alone among nations, spend to keep all of the little countries like Britain safer. I don't resent it personally because I know they are just incapable of doing it for themselves. They are too small, too weak, too divided and filled with hatred for each other to do it. You have to help the poor and infirm when you can. It's just right. And we're Americans so we do the right thing.

yrs,
rubato

Gob wrote:

rubato wrote:
And it neglects the cost of the "Pax Americana". The cost that we, alone among nations, spend to keep all of the little countries like Britain safer. I don't resent it personally because I know they are just incapable of doing it for themselves. They are too small, too weak, too divided and filled with hatred for each other to do it. You have to help the poor and infirm when you can. It's just right. And we're Americans so we do the right thing.

yrs,
rubato

Aspergers, it's not just for kiddies.