Posts
Wopusa adayimba ng’oma,
ochenjera anabvina’
‘One who is foolish beat a
drum while those who are clever danced’: Chichewa proverb.
Cameron recently declared
that foreign aid has been his proudest achievement. Now a Lib-dem MP is
introducing a Bill for the budget to be ring-fenced by law at 0.07% of GNI.
That’s our earnings. At a time when key Departments like Education are getting
cut, the aid budget has been increased to £12.6 billion from £8.4 billion since
this Government came into office. That’s nigh on 50% in four years. Some
austerity! This year it has increased by 28%. Meanwhile Britain has the
smallest army since the 18th Century and the smallest navy since
Henry VIII; it has been dangerously weakened as a result, and the NHS is facing
a major funding crisis.
Where does all this money go?
Well, name a ‘developing’
country and it’s on the list of beneficiaries, be it never so corrupt,
incompetent, or a terrorist haven. A kleptocracy where the ruling elite steal
everything not nailed down and much that is? Help yourself to some more from
HMG. The former President of Malawi spent his aid money on an executive jet and
a fleet of Mercs for his cronies, and there are endless similar examples. In
another place, aid money to buy ambulances was spent on SUVs for the big-shots…………and
so and so on!
Leading with the begging
bowls are Nigeria, an immensely wealthy oil state renowned for its endless
looting of the national treasury,
Pakistan (the money would help it to finance its nuclear weapons
programme and it massive defence budget, instead of taxes which nobody pays
anyway), India (one of the BRICS and another nuclear weapons owner),
Afghanistan (say no more), Ethiopia with a particularly oppressive and
unpleasant regime, Sudan where the President has an ICJ warrant out for him,
Zimbabwe, and so on ad nauseam. Pick any nasty, corrupt, failed state run by a
brutal dictator and British money is going there.
So here is the £50 billion
question. Does it actually do any good?
The answer is that it does
much more harm.
It
is good for the rapacious consultancy firms that specialise in ‘good
governance’ particularly. I have scrutinised Financial Proposals on behalf of the
beneficiary. It is not uncommon to charge out their specialists at $1200
dollars a day while paying $400 a day. A good mark-up, then. They play games
with air-fares, daily subsistence allowances and ‘lump sum’ items that require
no supporting documents. There are undoubtedly projects that have delivered the
goods, mostly those involving fixed and visible capital assets like roads. But
they are the exception.
Apart
from theft, fraud and all the other malfeasance, whether money is spent wisely
and usefully is questionable.
Example:
Monserrat is a tiny Caribbean island half of which is uninhabitable due to a series
of volcanic eruptions. Its current population is about 4500. The capital city
now lies under volcanic ash; almost nothing is visible. The main port and the airport were completely
destroyed. A new airport was built with UK aid funds at a cost of $18.5
million. The locals protested vehemently that it was in the wrong place, but
DFID knew better. The runway ends abruptly at a cliff edge. Millions have been
spent on ‘good governance’ programmes
for a community the size of a small parish council.
Cash
grants for resettlement might have been a better solution.
The
basic fault with aid is that it creates dependency. My Malawian counterpart reckoned that it was the worst
thing that had happened to Africa; without it Africans would have had to stand
on their own two feet. He described it as colonialism in a different guise, not
far from reality when the donors contribute a large proportion of the budget that they can
dictate to the beneficiary government – and do.
Most importantly, it severs
the tie between politician and voter/taxpayer. When aid replaces tax revenues,
the need for public accountability is minimalized, and this opens the door for
politicians to plunder the Treasury safe in the knowledge that the public will
not much care; it is not their money. Corruption becomes the norm.
In the UK the simple fact is
that such generosity is unaffordable.
No wonder we have a shiny new
aircraft carrier without any planes. It’s a mad world, my masters!
No comments:
Post a Comment