5/10/2011
Transparency of Italian ODA
10/21/2010
Italian ODA in 2011: another cut
This is another bad news for Italian ODA quantity.
The Budget session has officially started, and the 2011 budget proposal from the Governemnt is a further cut to the ODA that is can be still cut ( that is not linked to EC and EDF disbursements). This is mainly the ODA managed by the MFA. In one year, it is to l face a 45% reduction (-140 million euro) to reach the minimal level of 179 million euro. This follows the 56% reduction in 2009. ODA appropriations managed by the MFA is at an historical minimal level. It was not so low even when Italy had to face heavy expenditures reduction to enter the Euro zone in 1996. Italian NGOs are able to channel by far more funds for international development via their private fundraising than the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
7/13/2010
Development actors consultation: state of the art in 2010
7/09/2010
2010 International Military Decrees: a 20% reduction in ODA
In 2010, these two decrees provided additional financial resources to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs development cooperation budget up to 72 million euro – a 22% increase. However, the 2010 International military decrees approved less resources for international development cooperation interventions than last year - 22 million euro, a 20% reduction. The total financial resources provided by this second military decree are 12% less than those appropriated in the first semester with a 36% reduction for development cooperation activities. Financial resources for Afghanistan faced a 15% reduction while in other areas – Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan. Somalia - funds were cut by 56% in comparison to the first semester appropriations.
6/24/2010
Italian G8 commitments on International development
What happened to the Italian G8 commitments on International development? The 2010 G8 accountability report is a good step forward, as it lists all actions delivered by the G8 members, as these are reported by the Governments themselves. This mechanism lacks any independent validation but, at least, it provides a single registry to compare G8 performances.
According to the document,
As for each thematic commitments,
6/15/2010
Italian financial contribution to the Education for All Initiative
taly lists education among its thematic focuses in its international development cooperation initiatives but the Italian financial commitment to the FTI is very limited. It amounted at just 3 million euros per year in 2006-2007, to peak in 2008 with a 10 million euro disboursement.
Th 2008 trippling aimed at meeting the Italian pledges for two years (2008-2009), averaging 5 million euros per year. In 2010, Italy has again allocated only 3 million euro to the "Education for All initiative".
3/15/2010
Influence and allocations of the Italian bilateral aid
In 2008, 45% in the Italian bilateral aid was channelled towards
2/23/2010
EU aid ambitions derailed by Italy
On February 17th, DAC released the 2010 official development aid (ODA) projections for 2010. These data are far from official, as the 2010 data will be available in 2011, but they are the first official estimates assessing whether the 2010 aid targets are likely to be met. Unfortunately, the EU 0.56% ODA/GDP collective target agreed in 2005 is not going to be just a 0.48%, with more than 10 billion US dollar gap from its pledged levels.
The Italian ODA/GDP is estimated at 0.20% rather than the 2005 promised 0.51%. According to ActionAid own estimates, the DAC projections on
2/08/2010
Italian aid in 2009
1/28/2010
Italian aid fragmentation
According to a December DAC study on country aid fragmentation, between 2004 and 2008 donors fragmented initiatives increased. The main purpose of the study is to agree on a measure to label an aid relation as being a “concentrated action”. The criteria used is twofold: 1) being among the top 10 donors in the partner country or 2) allocating a share of aid to the partner country that is more than the average that those to average partner country. These top down and arbitrary criteria are a compromise between small and big donors, while not including partner country perspective to assess when an aid relation can be labelled as “significant”. Following the DAC methodology, fragmentation of Italian aid has slightly increased, and the Italian development cooperation should phase out and re-allocate aid activities in 12 out of 33 priority countries.
Another study by the
The European Commission has released a study trying to assess the financial advantages for the EU donors by fully applying the aid effectiveness criteria. The study sums up different estimates for volatility, uncoordinated donors mission and analysis and eventually it states that the EU could save between 3-6 billion euro a year with a Paris Declaration compliant management. By applying the same methodology to
1/20/2010
Reviw of Italian development cooperation by the DAC
Despite the challenges remaining, the DAC notes some improvement in Italian aid management since 2008. It welcomes Italy’s intention to focus on 35 priority countries, the greater authority given to Italy’s embassies and technical offices to deliver and to contribute to formulating programmes and deliver aid, and the Steering Committee on Development Co-operation’s high level policy direction.
Italy still needs a strategy for its development co-operation shared by all stakeholders and to ensure that development assistance committee; italian co-operation; DAC; official development assistanceall relevant government departments and regional and local authorities work to common objectives; build systems to promote coherence between development co-operation and other policies; reform human resource management for the core cadre of development experts; and regularly undertake monitoring and independent evaluation. In addition, the limited political debate and public awareness about Italian Co-operation show there is an urgent need for the Italian authorities, together with civil society, to build popular support for development and public pressure for reforming Italian Co-operation.
Out of the 19 reccomandation the DAC Chair pointed out to 4 major priorities for Italian aid : approval of a new legislation for development cooperation; a strategic vision; swif progresses on Policy coherence for developemnt and develop apublic opinion communication strategy.
12/18/2009
Official data on Italian aid in 2008
According to the 2008 DAC data, released on December 8th, the Italian ODA/GNI ratio was at 0.22%, with a 15% increase from its 2007 level, still second last among EU donors. By discounting debt relief, ODA/GNI decreases to 0.18% with
The top 5 countries are
Italian aid - as share of bilateral aid - to sub-Saharan
As for sectoral investment, Italian support to Basic Social Services increases by 100 million dollars, accounting 7% of the total bilateral ( it was 5.4% in 2007).
Italia tied aid has decreased to 20% of total bilateral from 40% last year. By discounting debt relief, as being untied aid by default, Italian united aid share decreases from 78% to 38%, improving Italian ranking from the last position to the fourth last.
12/10/2009
ODA from Italian Regions
11/24/2009
Italian debt relief activities since 2001 to 2009
The annual progress report on the implementation of the Italian law on international debt relief (Law n° 209/01) has been published. Since it has been implemented, from 2001 until June 2009, Italian bilateral debt relief activities amounted at 6,47 billion euro, with 61% in Africa and 68% included in the top five countries (
11/18/2009
Ranking Italian response to Humanitarian emergencies
It ranks: 20th as for its response to humanitarian needs and for its generosity, second last in prevention, ability to work with humanitarian partners and evaluation of humanitarian interventions.
Italy’s recorded best scores concern timeliness of funding for onset disasters (ranking 4th best donor) and Italy is among the best 10 performers as for the investments in forgotten crisis.
Looking at the details in the Index dimensions, Italian flaws in responding to emergencies get clearer and clearer. Italy ranks: 4th last as for need assessment capacity; 3rd last at contributing to human rights protection, transparency in funding, ability to save human lives and protect human dignity and it is the worst donor as for funding timeliness to complex emergencies.
In order to increase its index performance Italy should reform her strategic and management response to humanitarian emergency following Norway, Sweden and Ireland examples; all scoring among the top three donors for all index dimensions.
11/10/2009
Italian commitment to IFAD and conflict scenarios
During the 7th IFAD replenishment
At the end of October, the Government issued the third Decree extending Italian military missions abroad till the end of 2009. Although it provides financial resourses for the army, the Decree generally includes a financial envelope to fund development cooperation activities in countries in crisis. This last decree appropriates 6.8 million euro to development cooperation activities with the total level for 2009 up to 82 million euro. In comparison to last year, 2009 ended with a 12 million euro gap for development cooperation initiatives.
11/03/2009
Italian scores in the Commitment to Development Index, 2009
The Centre for Global Development has recently published the 2009 Index for Commitment to Global Development - CDI. The Index is supposed to assess the overall policy framework of each OECD country under the global/economic development lenses. The aim is to understand which donors policies should be reviewed or replicated in order to foster global development. The index is built on 7 policy areas - such as development, trade, investment, migration, environment, security and technology - and it allows cross country comparison.
In 2009
10/26/2009
Goverment commits to increase aid allocation before end of December
On October 27, the Government agreed on two bi-partisan parliamentary motion on increasing financial resources to development cooperation before the end of 2010. The minority motion was also accepted when mention to financial increase up to 500 million euro for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was removed. Now it just engages the government to significantly increase resources for development cooperation
The minority motion also commits the Government to start the Parliamentary debate on aid reform again, taking into account discussions during the last legislature, and eventually to clearly state which aid financial commitments will be met in 2010 due to dearth of financial resources.
The majority requests are more vague than the previous ones, asking the Government to fulfil its commitments towards the Global Fund and international food aid agreements, while also increasing development cooperation staff.
10/19/2009
The Italian and Development Aid
10/13/2009
Italy and policy coherence for development in 2009
10/06/2009
Italian Budget law: no increase to the 2009 minimal aid level
Today, the Parliamentary budget session has officially started in the Senate. The executive budget proposal restate the same financial level of the aid budget for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as in 2009, despite the G8 pledges. The MFA proposed budget for development cooperation is set at 326 million euro, in real terms the same level as in 2009. However, only 173 million euro could be committed to new development initiatives, as the remaining is needed to fund on going multiannual activities and cover administrative costs. This financial amount is even more limited when compared with how much Italian NGOs are able to collectively fund raise from the private sector- up to 300 million euro per year. More broadly, the whole budget does not seem to allocate financial resources to actually pay the first Italian instalment to the IDA 15 - 284 million euro. Needless to say that the Italian contribution to the Global Find against AIDS, tubercolosis and malaria, together with the IFAD and the Asian development Funds contributions would need an extra budgetary appropriation to be met. The Government has to present a special law to cover almost 1 billion euros to fund peace-keeping and enforcement missions in 2010, that will provide the last opportunity for
9/25/2009
Italian tied aid to the LDCs
The 2007 tied aid result in LDCs is quite surprising as Italy amended its International development Law's section dealing with tied soft loans, in order to comply with the 2001 and 2008 OECD/DAC recommendations on aid untying. This figure might point out to the need to better communicate internally changes of the Italian aid regulatory framework in order to chance long-established aid management practices
8/05/2009
Italian ODA in 2009 after the G8 Summit
At the G8 summit, Prime Minister Berlusconi reaffirmed his commitment to meeting the aid pledges which
The Italian Government’s announcements on aid can be seen as a response to the media campaign which culminated in the last few weeks to the
In reality, the
In the wake of
To sum up, the budget appropriation session just started is not making provision for an increase in ODA levels, which currently reflect the 56% cut in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) managed aid (about 23% of on-budget ODA). If no change in the current financial legislation is passed, the MFA aid will face a further 33% reduction in 2011, after a minimal increase in 2010.
7/30/2009
Italy not meeting DAC recommendations on aid untying to LDC
7/22/2009
Threats to aid effectiveness implementation
7/15/2009
Italian Plan on Aid effectiveness approved
7/06/2009
In 2009 only 11% of the Italian aid commitments to Sub-saharan Africa
6/26/2009
71% of the Italian public support meeting aid pledges
According to a recently released Oxfam opinion poll on the Italian general public, 71% support meeting the 0.7 aid target, event in the current economic turmoil, with 41% agreeing on an immediate financial increase in the current aid levels. The result is consistent with those from previous surveys, showing the interest of the Italian general public on aid issues. Eventually, when asked about aid spending priority, 60% said aid should support access to public health facilities of the poorest people in developing countries.