Wednesday, January 5, 2005
Franco Alemán, blogging from Spain, finds that the vast bulk of Spain's supposedly generous contribution to tsunami-relief actually comes in the form of...loans. And here I thought the Leftists in charge of countries like Spain were against third-world debt.
...Only 5 million Euros (roughly $6.5 million) are real donations. All the rest, that is, almost $70 millios, are so-called Development Aid Funds, that is a scheme of low-interest loans (link in Spanish) by the Spanish government to undeveloped countries under the condition that they're spent in Spanish products. It's means they're little more than mere subsidized exports, and will grow the affected countries' foreign debt. NGOs are quite unhappy about this, and rightly so...
