Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Rethinking Aid donations

It has been reported that 40% of the money promised/delivered to aid Afghan has been spent on "corporate profits and consultancy fees" and that "much of the money earmarked for aid is diverted to political or military purposes."

It makes one think about the realities and purposes of aids especially when one considers the conditionality the aids entail, such as world bank's conventionalities which include liberalisation and privatization of public goods etc. This of course has to be considered in addition to the amount of tax deduction companies and individuals get.

These problems have been addressed, such as UK charity organisation asking their government to withhold money from the world bank until it changes the conventionalities of their funds, which unfortunately did not succeed. Last year UK's development secretary, Douglas Alexander handed £2bn-plus to the institution no strings attached.

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