"Big picture, it's not a win on either side", Polly Meeks from EURODAD on new Foreign Aid waste report, Jazz FM Business Breakfast
Sep 24, 2018, 08:20 AM
The question of foreign aid – how to spend it, who to spend it on, and whether it should be spent in the first place – has always been divisive.
But most would agree that when money is being spent on developing nations, it should be doing the most good, with as little waste as possible.
A new report from development network EURODAD shows that despite 17 years of recommendations, countries including the UK are still linking almost half their aid budgets to projects benefiting their own firms – so called Tied Aid – even if it means developing economies get a worse deal.
In 2016 that’s thought to have cost them between 2 and 5.5 billion dollars.
Nick Howard speaks to me the report’s author, Polly Meeks, live from Brussels