Foreign aid by major donor countries slumped last year as debt-relief plans tapered off and amid a global economic downturn in Japan and some other rich nations, a Paris-based think tank said Friday. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned in a new report that the United States and other donors are falling behind ambitious targets set in 2005 to increase global aid to the needy and backtracking on pledges. European Union chief Jose Manuel Barroso chided member countries over the report's findings, warning that if the 27-nation bloc doesn't reverse the trend, it will fail to meet UN promises to halve extreme poverty by 2015 and will dent the EU's credibility as the world's largest donor. Foreign aid from the 22 major donor countries that the OECD measures dropped 8.4 percent in 2007 to $103.7 billion, the report says. Most of the drop was attributed to the end of unusually high debt relief programs for Iraq and Nigeria in 2005 and 2006, the report says. But in several countries, aid went down even when debt relief was not factored in. Japanese aid dropped a full 24 percent, US aid dropped 3.4 percent and British aid dropped 2 percent _ all not including debt relief. OECD officials said the shrinking aid from Japan and some other countries was linked to an economic downturn in 2007. Foreign aid made up a smaller part overall of rich nations' economies last year - 0.28 percent - than in 2006, when the figure was 0.31 percent. Aid rose in some areas, including to Afghanistan and sub-Saharan Africa and for AIDS-related projects, the OECD said. The Group of Eight industrialized nations pledged at their 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, to increase overall foreign aid by $50 billion by 2010. EU nations and other international donors agreed at the United Nations in 2000 to halve extreme poverty by 2015 among other ambitious targets. Some countries have since adjusted down their targets because of economic difficulties. “Overall, most donors are not on track to meet their stated commitments to scale up aid and will need to make unprecedented increases to meet the targets they have set for 2010,” the OECD report said. Aid groups decried the falling aid figures. Oxfam urged the next US administration to expand and improve foreign aid efforts. “For every dollar the US spends on poverty-focused aid, it spends almost US$33 on defense,” said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, in a statement. “When aid is effective, it builds a safer world for everyone.” In Brussels, EU chief Barroso warned that one-time debt relief bailouts to poor countries, which many EU nations have used to prop up their official aid figures, are not enough. “Debt decisions are very positive but they are one-off measures. We need more predictable and sustained aid,” Barroso said in a statement. The EU as a whole slipped gave less aid last year than the previous year for the first time since it committed in 2000 to raising aid spending on a yearly basis. EU aid was ¤47.7 billion in 2006 and ¤46.1 billion in 2007. The 27 EU nations spent 0.38 percent of their gross national income on development aid in 2007, compared with 0.41 percent in 2006. Statistics showed that only the Netherlands, Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden and Norway were able to meet the 0.7 percent UN aid target. The United States spends 0.16 percent on development aid. __
