Financial Bill 2009: further cut for ODA

On October 2nd, the Italian Parliament officially started the 2009 Budget session, where ODA is facing a further cut, beyond the one approved last June. Although the total ODA is neither fully included into the budget – i.e. debt relief or concessional loans - nor in the budget bill – extra budgetary allocations, it is difficult to assess the ODA quantity in the budget bill.
Aid resources are scattered among different and sometime generic budget headings. Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) are by far the main ODA shareholders, in terms of genuine aid – excluding debt cancellations. In the proposed 2009 Budget, the MFA ODA appropriation is at just 321 million euro, the minimum level since 2000, half of the budget available in 2001, in real terms. It represents a 56% reduction from last year appropriation. The proposed amount is much less than what Italian NGOs are annually raising as private contributions – 400 million euro. The main culprits for this reduction are the last June budget expenditures bill and the MFA itself that had decided to allocate its whole budget cut (421 million euro) to the disadvantage of its own ODA budget. The result is paradoxical and clearly unfair for ODA: MFA aid appropriation are just 0,01% to the total budget expenditure but represents 4,7% of the whole State budget cut. In order to estimate 2009 Italian aid levels, Ministry of Finance ODA appropriation and planned debt relief are not clear, yet. ActionAid is forecasting the range of 2009 aid levels. The results will be posted on October the 8th.