Sheiks and Sultans – Have Opened Their Wallets !
Impovrished countries like Cambodia are giving what they can while the U.S. moves an entire naval carrier group to give immediate aid and support in excess of 35M from emergency funds, with more on the way after assessment. This story was even given a fair but somewhat biased coverage in Al-Jazeera today, (not accounting for % GDP) although they are not highlighting the obvious as we have done except putting the “oil rich nation” remarks in their comments along with disclosure of their contributions! One of our readers commented (thank you Patrick ASD) that as a % of GDP the “Oil Rich Nations” HAVE actually given generous contributions. [We stand corrected from previous post.] So we have included some of his GDP normalization, however we are not sure if it reflected currency normalization, and is shown in bold brackets under the original Al-Jazeera posting. Just to be fair, we are reposting this one…
From Aljazeera (Un-confirmed) just to share their perspective:
“…The US more than doubled its initial aid pledge to $35 million, Canada $33 million and Japan $30 million to lead a string of countries – rich and poor – to roll out the world’s largest international aid operation for decades to devastated coastal areas.
AUSTRALIA: $27 million, five air force transport planes with supplies and medical teams as well as team of police…”BRAZIL: Sent air force plane with up to 10 tonnes of food and 6-8 tonnes of medicine to Thailand.
BRITAIN: 15 million pounds ($29 million).
[0.00174% GDP]CAMBODIA: $40,000.
CANADA: Government aid C$40 million ($33 million). Private
donations to non-governmental organisations such as Red Cross exceeds C$8.5 million.
[0.00344% GDP]CHINA: 21.6 million yuan ($2.6 million).
CZECH REPUBLIC: A plane sent to Sri Lanka with drinking
water. Officials said aid worth $444,400 would be sent.EUROPEAN UNION: Ready to release up to 30 million euros ($41 million) on top of 3 million euros already allocated to IFRC.
FINLAND: Pledged 500,000 euros to the IFRC. Local
aid organisations have contributed another 75,000 euros. The Finnish Red Cross has sent a field hospital with 15 staff to Sri Lanka.FRANCE: 15 million euros pledged and 110 tonnes of aid, along with 16 rescuers sent to Thailand.
GERMANY: 2 million euros. Three German planes to be dispatched to Phuket.
INDIA: Has promised over $23 million in monetary aid besides sending warships and aircraft to distribute food, medicines and blankets to Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
JAPAN: $30 million pledged and three navy vessels sent to Thailand.
KUWAIT: Supplies worth $2 million pledged and $100,000 sent.
[0.00500%]QATAR: $10 million
SAUDI ARABIA: $10 million package pledged, half to be distributed via the Saudi Red Crescent, and half for international aid groups.
[0.00347% GDP]SLOVAKIA: Sent plane with drinking water, tents and medicine
to Sri Lanka; aid worth 6.6 million Slovak crowns ($231,660).SLOVENIA: Donating 20 million tolars ($113,500) through International Red Cross and Crescent.
SOUTH KOREA: $2 million.
TAIWAN: $5.1 million.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: $2 million.
[UAE - 0.00347%]UNITED STATES: $35 million and 12 vessels to region.
[0.00031% GDP]
It’s gratifying to see that the world is finally coming together around this tragedy.
Too bad the U.N. is still floundering except for pointing fingers at aid disparities. This should be their opportunity to shine. Let’s just hope Kofi Annan and his sons stay away from the contributions. It improves the chances of it getting to the people who need it. We wonder who will inspect the U.N inspectors this time around? Can the U.N. be entrusted with administering relief aid amounting to the billions of dollars? This blogger thinks not.
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on Thursday - Dec 30th, 2004 at 4:47 pm Patrick ASD wrote:
‘Oil Rich Middle Eastern Nations…Your governments are an embarrasment to your people. Impovrished countries like Cambodia gives what it can.’
So it seems like you are reading the table you quote from Aljazeera as showing that Cambodia and the U.S. are giving aid generously while those ‘oil rich nations’ are being mean. But here are some calculations I have done based on the GDP of the countries using the same aid figures from Aljazeera to calculate the aid pledged as a proportion of GDP (ie how much they are giving as a proportion of how much they have, simplisticly put):
USA – 0.00031%
UK – 0.00174%
Canada – 0.00344%
UAE – 0.00347%
Saudi Arabia – 0.00347%
Kuwait – 0.00500%
Notice anything about that list. What I see is that, as a proportion of what they have, the ‘oil rich nations’ are being relatively generous in what they give. Also I notice that the USA are an order of magnitude behind those ‘oil rich nations’ when their generousity is measured this way.
I’m not certain that it is up to me to judge whether people in other countries should be embarrased by the international aid decisions made by their governments. But if I did I might look a little harder at my own government before pointing my finger elsewhere. I can say that the country of which I am a citizen does relatively well in that list and I still think that they can and should do a lot more.
on Thursday - Dec 30th, 2004 at 8:19 pm ZZ OpenWeb Staff wrote:
You know Patrick you make a good point. We stand corrected. Will edit to reflect your insight. Wonder why Al-Jazeera chose to list this information the way they did? Have you left a comment on their site as well? — zzb
on Thursday - Dec 30th, 2004 at 9:59 pm Patrick ASD wrote:
I commend you on your quick update, not everyone would do this so promptly (or at all).
I didn’t get the same impression from the Aljazeera article that you did. Although it does refer to Saudi Arabia as ‘oil rich’ I just read that as being a contrast to the poverty of Cambodia who also donated funds rather than any barbed comment. That is, I read the article as saying that nations rich and poor have been moved by this disaster.
Regarding your point about currency normalization. Well I’m no economist so I can’t answer very usefully. The CIA Factbook provided the estimated 2004 GDP figures which I used in my calculations. The figures are calculated using the PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) method. (details can be found under ‘GDP methodology’ on the CIA Factbook notes and definitions page.) Whether this method of calculating GDP would significantly skew the apparent size of the donations I’m really not qualified to say. However I think that they probably still offer some useful insight into the relative ‘generosity’ of different nations, which is what I was looking for.