As the world today marks International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, Malta is being asked to come clean about its foreign aid spending, at a time when government dialogue with civil society organisations is deteriorating. Sarah Carabott reports.
Malta is being urged to stop inflating its figures on overseas development aid by factoring in money it spends on asylum seekers when such funds do not actually leave the country.
The appeal was made in a report by development NGOs who are warning that despite an increasing poverty rate across the world, the EU is still falling short of reaching its own targets for official development assistance (ODA).
It is high-time for member states to scale-up efforts in supporting livelihoods and stop playing political games, warned CONCORD, the confederation of relief and development NGOs that drew up the AidWatch 2021 report.
Like the rest of the EU, Malta still does not fulfil the pledge of allocating 0.7 per cent of gross national income (GNI) to ODA.
Additionally, only slightly more than a fourth of what it claims it spends on ODA is actually considered “genuine aid”.
The data about Malta was collected by KOPIN, a member of the local platform SKOP, which is a founding member of CONCORD.
KOPIN executive director William Grech explained that Malta considers its spend on asylum applicants in the first 12 months of their arrival in Malta as ODA. It, therefore, includes meals contracts awarded to local food suppliers, schooling and school transport costs of refugee children. Funds spent on asylum applications, detention and open centres, health and security are also classified by the government as ODA.
The government also adds scholarship grants to people from developing countries studying in Malta, exemption of tuition fees at the university, MCAST and junior college and assisted voluntary return projects in its ODA calculations.
All this money is spent in Malta. “AidWatch is not contesting the fact that these costs could, eventually, lead to development in countries of origin, through remittance sent to families of asylum seekers, or skilled migrants who return home.
“The problem is that when they are reported by donor countries as ODA, these costs are being used to inflate their contribution to what should actually be cash flows into developing countries,” Grech said.
Malta with highest discrepancy
Across the EU, ODA in 2020 was 0.5 per cent of its GNI, an increase from 0.42 per cent in 2019. However, this increase was a result of the EU’s economy shrinking because of the global pandemic, according to CONCORD.
On paper, compared to the other 12 countries that joined the EU since 2004, Malta last year dedicated the highest percentage of its GNI to ODA. However, it also had the highest discrepancy between its ODA expenditure and genuine aid.
Malta reported that in 2020 it spent 0.44 per cent of its GNI on ODA, an increase from the 0.3 per cent reported in 2019. In real terms, this is a year-on-year increase of €14.4 million, up to €51 million.
While this is the fourth consecutive year that Malta registered a notable increase on the previous year, AidWatch is concerned that reporting standards have fallen.
The ODA report for 2019 published by the government includes less detail than the previous ones, which hampers attempts to analyse Malta’s performance, it said.
Additionally, the annual call for civil society organisations projects was not issued for 2020, following a failed attempt in late 2019 to link such projects to trade promotion in Ghana and Ethiopia.
“The cabinet change in January 2020 brought in a new minister for foreign affairs, while the trade promotion portfolio was reallocated to the economy ministry.
“The global pandemic absorbed much of the ministry’s attention, but it is unfortunate that civil society organisations’ proposals to support long-standing partner beneficiaries in facing the challenge of COVID were totally disregarded.”
And when in late 2020 the ministry issued a call for three ‘pre-defined projects’ in Ethiopia and Ghana, the beneficiaries and activities had been identified and defined beforehand by the ministry itself.
“This meant that Maltese civil society organisations were effectively restricted to a service provision role and were deprived of both ownership and the right of initiative.”
The report also warns that government dialogue with civil society has deteriorated.
“Not only did the Maltese government refrain from collaborating with civil society in supporting community organisations in partner countries, to alleviate the impact of the pandemic on the most at-risk people: it has also retreated completely from consultation and communication with the development cooperation community.”
None of the recommendations from last year’s report were taken into consideration by the Maltese government.
Recommendations for 2022
• Increase the amount of genuine aid and make refugee costs additional to ODA spending targets.
• Increase the transparency of ODA reporting.
• Support civil society organisations in increasing their capacity to implement and monitor projects.
• Engage with Maltese civil society and development experts in an assessment of the Maltese ODA programme and policy, evaluating among others, their effectiveness.