Last October, I took a weeklong trip to Haiti. From Port au Prince, I took the bumpiest bus ride of my life eight hours into the country to rural Leon. Over the 187 miles outside of the capital, I passed one store, one bathroom, and a few shacks with the word “Bank” painted on them. The bus drove through a river, stopped for an hour while a makeshift road crew moved boulders that had fallen in the road and miraculously drove along the winding narrow dirt paths in the mountains with only the dim headlights to light the way without falling over the cliffs. The only hint of infrastructure was the fact that I still had internet on my cell phone once in Leon, but consistent electricity or running water would have been too much to ask for even
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When the government sends bilateral aid, direct payments to another countries’ government, much of this money never fulfills its intended goals. Aid is one of corruption’s closest allies. Aid transfers allot corrupt governments huge sums of cash that get misused for luxurious lifestyles and the financing of personal militias instead of helping the country or its citizens. The African union estimates that corruption costs the continent $150 billion every year. Malawi top government officials siphoned $30 million out of the government’s budget, in which foreign aid consists of almost half the annual total budget. The 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index has over 30 out of 47 African Countries scoring 3 out of 10, and there is a strong correlation between aid dependency and low corruption index scores(meaning high levels of corruption). Corruption undercuts economic growth. Aid fuels corruption. I’ll let you decide what’s best for underdeveloped countries.
Not only is foreign aid counterproductive, but it hurts the United States in various ways as well. There is the obvious loss of billions of dollars, and while $37 billion is only 1 percent of the United States budget, it could be better spent elsewhere, such as improving physical or social infrastructure (the U.S. was ranked 14th by the Global Competitiveness Report for physical infrastructure) or paying off some of the $17 trillion national debt. The United States also loses out on possible trading partners by suppressing the growth of developing
When the government sends bilateral aid, direct payments to another countries’ government, much of this money never fulfills its intended goals. Aid is one of corruption’s closest allies. Aid transfers allot corrupt governments huge sums of cash that get misused for luxurious lifestyles and the financing of personal militias instead of helping the country or its citizens. The African union estimates that corruption costs the continent $150 billion every year. Malawi top government officials siphoned $30 million out of the government’s budget, in which foreign aid consists of almost half the annual total budget. The 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index has over 30 out of 47 African Countries scoring 3 out of 10, and there is a strong correlation between aid dependency and low corruption index scores(meaning high levels of corruption). Corruption undercuts economic growth. Aid fuels corruption. I’ll let you decide what’s best for underdeveloped countries.
Not only is foreign aid counterproductive, but it hurts the United States in various ways as well. There is the obvious loss of billions of dollars, and while $37 billion is only 1 percent of the United States budget, it could be better spent elsewhere, such as improving physical or social infrastructure (the U.S. was ranked 14th by the Global Competitiveness Report for physical infrastructure) or paying off some of the $17 trillion national debt. The United States also loses out on possible trading partners by suppressing the growth of developing