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2022-03-28 Europe
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Germany looks set to cut development aid
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[DW] As Germany dramatically boosts its defense budget in the face of the Ukraine war, it is planning a reduction of development aid by 12% in its draft budget.
Germany's new Finance Minister Christian Lindner, from the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), has presented his draft budget for his first year in office. It foresees spending to the tune of €457.6 billion ($503.5 bn). Not all of the government ministers are happy with the plans.
The budget of Germany's Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, for example, is to shrink to €10.8 billion — while the defense budget is set to increase to over €50 billion. The boost to the defense budget is due to the war in Europe.
But Ukraine and Russia are also major grain exporters — and those exports will now all but dry up as the war continues.
"The war in the world's breadbasket is having a dramatic impact on global nutrition," warned Development Minister Svenja Schulze, from the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).
Meanwhile,
...back at the revival hall, Buford bit the snake and Eloise began speaking in tongues...
Germany is set to cut its contribution to the World Food Programme by 50% to €28 million. "This amount will not be enough to compensate for crop failures and prevent famine," Schulze warned.
WAR IN UKRAINE THREATENS GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY
Even before the war broke out, she said, the COVID pandemic affected the poorest countries, adding to the burden on their health systems and economies. And all this was on top of the climate crisis, which is hitting the world's poorest countries the hardest, with droughts, storms, floods, and crop failures.
Bad Luck™
Germany will uphold its commitment to spend 0.7% of economic output, amounting to €23 billion, towards official development assistance (ODA). But government spending towards refugees in Germany and humanitarian assistance organized by the Foreign Ministry count as part of ODA as well and make up more than half of development assistance spending.
The actual German development aid budget is an investment in specific programs to alleviate poverty in the long term, rather than the short-term response of humanitarian aid . Germany supports economic, environmental, social, and political programs in developing countries, which contribute to the fight against hunger and poverty, the protection of the climate and biodiversity, health and education, gender equality, fair supply chains, and technology transfer. Germany is one of the largest donor countries worldwide.
But the smallest partner in the new coalition government,the business-focused Free Democrats (FDP) have a skeptical view of development aid. In its party platform, the FDP states that substantial savings are possible in this area — by placing the focus on "quality rather than quantity," according to party publications. It is the party's chairman, Finance Minister Lindner, who has now presented the draft budget slashing the development aid by €1.6 billion.
"The way forward can not be to have more and more projects. We need to be more efficient. Everything needs to be put to the test, whether it's small or large organizations, bilateral or multilateral projects," argued FDP politician Claudia Raffelhuschen in this week's debate in the federal parliament, the Bundestag.
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