The government nearly quadrupled the amount of aid that it gave to poor countries in 2009, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Wednesday, bringing Russia closer to its OECD peers in terms of foreign development assistance.
"Russia allocated $800 million from the federal budget, according to preliminary estimations, in order to provide aid to developing countries," Kudrin said Wednesday. "Meanwhile, $220 million were allocated for these purposes a year earlier."
In 2007, then-President Vladimir Putin signed a framework document that called for the country to increase its participation in international development assistance programs and outlined several key points that the country intended to follow.
According to the document, Russia's policy on international development assistance was to be carried out through grants, debt relief, loans and technical assistance for countries developing national institutions such as health and education.
In 2007, Russia wrote off 90 percent of $11.3 billion of Afghanistan's Soviet-era debt and more than $20 billion of debt from poor African countries.
Although not all sovereign donors managed to maintain their level of foreign aid during the last year and a half, "the world managed to keep financing in accordance with the approved indices," Kudrin said.
In 2008, international donors spent $119.7 billion on aid programs, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Kudrin said international aid has more than doubled since 2003, growing from $53 billion to $121 billion in 2009.
The UN Millennium declaration, a protocol of intentions behind international donation programs, aims to halve the proportion of those who suffer from hunger and those with incomes below $1 a day by the year 2015, as well as to achieve a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million people who live in slums by 2020.
Although Russian assistance through international financial institutions and UN agencies increased almost 20-fold to an estimated $800 million in 2009 from $47 million in 2003, the country still falls short of the sums donated by other developed countries.
According to OECD data, the top five donors in 2008 were the United States, which gave $26 billion or 0.18 percent of gross national income; Germany ($13.9 billion or 0.38 percent of GNI); the United Kingdom ($11.4 billion or 0.43 percent of GNI); France ($10.9 billion or 0.39 percent of GNI); and Japan ($9.3 billion or 0.18 percent of GNI). The $800 million Russia donated in 2009 would put it at an estimated 0.05 percent of GNI.
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