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| FT.com: The aid that isn't |
| 2005-04-14 |
| When is "foreign aid" not foreign aid? When it is debt written off by governments that should never have lent it in the first place. .. According to the OECD's rules, the full face value of official commercial debt (typically export credits) written off by its member governments counts as foreign aid. The rich Paris Club of creditor nations hold some $40bn (£21.2bn) of Iraq's crippling $120bn official debt burden. Next year, the first $15bn to be written off will boost OECD members' aid total by more than 15 per cent. But as the OECD notes, this is misleading. A writedown of unpayable commercial bad debt to an oil producer is not comparable to aid to Africa to combat HIV-Aids or build ports. The official export credit agencies whose often questionable loans generate much of the bad commercial debt are mercantilist export promoters, not aid agencies. ... |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #3 This is the kind of socialist claptrap I've come to expect from the Financial Times. They should change the color of their newspaper from pink to red. Export credits represent real goods handed over to the debtor governments. If they wanted to, they could have turned around and sold these goods for cash. Private concerns do buy and sell the same kinds of goods for cash every single day. This FT journalist is saying that it's not really money because he or she says so. But it is money - money that came out of the pockets of OECD taxpayers. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-04-14 4:33:11 PM |
| #2 eLarson - isn't that what it's mostly about anyway - at least from the EU? |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2005-04-14 1:49:35 PM |
| #1 So it's a "feel good" for countries who don't do anything to help anybody. |
| Posted by: eLarson 2005-04-14 12:00:18 PM |