And Bono is happy

Here's bad news for my rhetoric and good news for the rest of the world.

Aid rose 31.4 percent to $106.5 billion, a sum which represents 0.33 percent of their gross national income and is half way toward the long-standing U.N. goal of 0.7 percent.

After years of polishing a speech on how the West is greedy, I'll have to adapt it and update my statistics. It's good news for the developing world, development agencies and... national industries. Yes, much of this "development aid" goes to rich countries' industries and consultants. It can be tied aid (money that goes only to a country's industry) or untied aid, in which a country pays for an industry located in any country - but it happens to be in developed countries most of the time, anyway.

I'm surprised by this statistics.

But even after stripping out debt relief, aid rose by 8.7 percent, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said.*

My experience and theoretical knowledge of debt relief tells me that countries shift their aid from specific programs to debt relief. I wouldn't have expected an increase once the debt relief money was withdrawn. Then, it must really be good news.

This is a huge leap for the US:

U.S. aid as a proportion of national income rose to 0.22 percent, its highest since 1986, from 0.17 percent in 2004.

Congratulations, Americans!

* It's the Organisation, not the Organization. Link to the original press release.

Update: From the Financial Times: "According to OECD rules, rich governments’ commercial loans such as export credits, count as part of a country’s aid effort when they are written off, even though a borrower country may not be servicing that debt. Non-governmental organisations, including Oxfam, Save the Children and ActionAid, criticise the practice of counting debt relief as aid, arguing that official commercial debt, such as export credits, subsidises the companies of the wealthy countries and is not comparable to spending on activities such as combating HIV-Aids."

But mostly: "Excluding debt relief, the UK was one of only three countries whose aid contribution fell in real terms last year. The others were Germany and Portugal." The UK, champion of aid increase in 2005! Put your money where your mouth is!