Barreiro, Sahuquillo, and Rodríguez y Cascante at the presentation of the report./ Picture: Alternativas
Eduardo González. Madrid
The economic crisis, which has been affecting Spain since 2008, has had a significant impact in the Spanish Official Development Assistance, which barely reached 0.16 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product in 2012 and has since then fallen by 22 per cent in the General Budget of the State for 2014.
In the last report carried out by the non-governmental organization Intermón Oxfam about the reality of the official development assistance, published in March 2014, Spain was, in 2012, the country that had reduced its contributions to the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) the most in percentage terms, with a fall of 70 per cent, quite far from the penultimate, Greece (53 per cent), and the antepenultimate, Iceland (46 per cent).
Besides, the 1,815 million euros for development assistance approved by the General Budget of the State for 2014 are 22 per cent lower than those of 2012, according to Kattya Cascante, coordinator of the panel Development Cooperation of the Fundación Alternativas and one of the authors of the report El impacto de la crisis sobre el tejido social solidario de España: efectos y reacción de las ONGD frente a la crisis (The impact of the crisis on the social solidarity of Spain: effects and reactions of the NGDOs facing the crisis), presented last week in Madrid and elaborated by the Fundación Alternativas in collaboration with the Fundación de Iniciativas para la Paz (Fundipax).
“In addition to the reduction of funds and the distancing of commitment as regards development assistance”, the economic crisis has favoured “an increasing balance between the ODA budgeted by the administrations and the one being actually executed”, the report warns.
Despite the crisis and the cutbacks, the society keeps trusting the NGDO
“Spain, which was the seventh biggest donor before the crisis, has damaged its social solidarity with cutbacks and legislative reforms”, standing out the laws on Subsidies to NGDOs, Public Security, Transparency and Education, the authors of the document denounce.
“Cutbacks are justified to facilitate Spain’s economic recovery, as if saving such a small budget (0.5 per cent of the national Gross Domestic Product in its highest moment) could imply such thing”, Erika Rodríguez, co-author of the report and coordinator of the panel Latin America in the Fundación Alternativas, regretted.
