DAN Blog

The Irish Government yesterday annouced a major increase of Foreign Aid, year by year commencing now, with a target of doubling present levels of aid by 2012. Aid is scheduled to increase yearly from this years €740 million to € 1.5 billion in 2012, at which time it should represent 0.7% of ireland’s GNP, the UN target. EU countries who have accepted the same target are not due to reach it until 2015.

 In launching the new commitment in Dublin, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern stated that irish people are strongly committed to foreign aid and to sharing our recently found wealth with poorer people of the world “with whom we share a common humanity”

 Most Irish AId is focused on 8 Priority countries , these being Ethiopia, Mozambique, Lesotho, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Timor-Leste and Vietnam. Malawi will now be added to this list. Laos, we hear, and a few others may be added later. The focus is usually on poverty reduction and funds go to health and education in large amounts. However, c. 90 other countries are also eligible to a lesser degree. Irelands Aid Programme has been praised for its efficiency and lack of tied-ness to purchase of irish products or services. In general money is provided for specific sustainable projects and not simply added to recipient governments general coffers.

More later….

My first blog:  Visiting Jamaica from London – on business – but it’s Friday afternoon, early evening the week-end is upon us.

For most Kingstonians and other Jamaicans, it’s time to temporarily forget their economic worries left behind by Dr.Omar Davies  the Minister of Finance who is off to the IMF/World Bank meeting in Singapore. Unfortunately he will not have taken the economic mess he has created, instead he will temporarily experience the miracle of Singapore. Dr.Davies will be ensconsed in one of the Island state’s luxurious hotels, oblivious of the fact, or conveniently forgetting that in 1962 Jamaica had both a higher GNP and faster growth rate than Singapore. Today Jamaicas’s under US$3,000.00 per capita income is roughly 10% of Singapore’s.

Maybe it’s unfare to blame Dr. Davies alone for the economic mess in which this island paradise finds itself, after all 60% of the university educated Jamaicans have migrated to London, New York, Toronto, Miami, Atlanta and elswhere, yours truly among them.

Which came first though, the chicken or the egg?,did the educated elite leave and caused the mess, or did the ceonomic mess caused the brain drain?

Monday I will share my thoughts on the matter, what do you think??

Have a great week-end wherever you are, hope its not Baghdad, Kabul,Dahfur or Zimbzbwe.