Swiss Parliament Approves Aid Budget Till 2024

New Aid Budget

              The Swiss Parliament has approved a development aid budge of CHF11.25 billion (around 12.42 billion dollars as per latest exchange rate) for period of 2021-2024. It is more by CHF147 million than previous aid budget, even though the coronavirus pandemic has impact on the country’s economy and decrease of GDP is expected. Majority of the sources will go for humanitarian aid – CHF8.78 billion, whereas rest of funding will cover, among others, peace and human security budget (CHF258 million), economic development cooperation (CHF1.186 billion), financing for countries of Eastern Europe (CHF1.025 billion), bilateral and multilateral development cooperation (CHF6.638 billion)

Fewer States

              The new strategy of distributing the development aid is focused on four zones: the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia (Central, South and South-East), and Eastern Europe. The beneficiary states were limited  from 46 to 35. The countries that won’t received help from the budget are Bolivia, Haiti, Honduras, Cuba, Nicaragua, Swaziland, Lesotho, Malawi, Mongolia, Pakistan and Azerbaijan. 

Cost for Taxpayers

              The new aid budget will cost taxpayers CHF0.80 per resident per day (just citizens, not taking into the account cross-border workers), which will amount to 0.46% of Gross National Income for the whole period – less than 0.5% target put by the parliament back in 2011.

Why Not More?

              The strategy was announced back in February, but voted in the Parliament just now. The aim of the aid budget was to be more generous, and also efficient at the same time, as previously the right-wing Swiss People’s Party was criticizing the aid budget for wasting money. The debate in the Swiss Parliament focused mostly on the allocation of source. There were also votes from the left-wing parliamentarians that the aid is too low. As stated Carlo Sommaruga from the Social Democratic Party the proportion of money put aside for development was just below 0.5% in next three years, which is far from objectives set by the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Also, he pointed out that the amount was lower than previously demanded by the Swiss Parliament – 0.5%, and lower than 0.7%, which was target set by the international community 50 years ago. But the Foreign Minister, Ingazio Casis, opposed that taking into the account the current situation with pandemic of COVID-19 and shrinking GD for this and next year, it won’t be wise to pub aside more funds for aid. In the end, only members od the swiss People’s Party opposed approving the aid development budget.