Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Op/ed: Spain’s aid to Latin America grows while U.S. share shrinks

Andres Oppenheimer bemoans the steady decrease in U.S. aid to Latin America over the past two decades while other countries are more willing to provide aid. , , ,
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I disagree with the core suggestion of Oppenheimer's article that the U.S. ought to "regain its 1960s image as a benevolent superpower." There is so much that is so terribly ignorant about this statement that a response from me would be a book length project. And it's a book that has already been written by many others.

So leave that aside. Let's focus on a relative technicality. A lot of people are claiming lately that USAID LAC funds have been reducing (Adam Isaacson for example at CIP http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/blog/archives/000227.htm#more).

But if one actually looks at the USAID Budget Justification webpages for the years 1998-2005 (http://www.usaid.gov/policy/budget/cbj2005/lac/), one finds a lot of numbers that challenge the idea that U.S. aid to LAC "has been decreasing steadily for the past two decades."

If I am reading the tables correctly, the USAID Total for the LAC (Latin America and Caribbean) region stood at $6,976,892 in 1997, rose to a peak of $898,215,000 in 2003, and tapered off to $805,605,000 in the 2005 Request.

So, that's like a 12,800% increase from '98 to 2003, and then a relatively tiny 110% decrease from 2003 to 2005.

I think what Oppenheimer and others are seizing upon is that it has recently become clear that there will be a further decrease in aid to LAC from 2005-2006 of about 25%. But still, this is nothing compared to the huge jump from the late 90s to the 00s.

On the other hand it is equally absurd to state, as Condoleeza Rice did in Australia last week, that U.S. foreign aid has risen 50% worldwide over the past five years, and that aid to Africa has tripled. The same USAID tables will debunk either extreme.

Again, I am just a hack at this, and I hope that someone will let me know if I am reading the USAID tables incorrectly.

12:23 PM

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