This is a further update to the aid figures relative to GDP that I provided yesterday. I’ve included some information about private giving that’s now available, as well as some information about Canadian provinces.
Update: Noon 31 December 2004.
The U.S. has announced an increase of their aid to $350 million and China announced an increase to $60.42 million. The new numbers are reflected in this update.
A few countries, mainly in Europe, accelerated their aid yesterday. Here is an updated chart:
CONSOLIDATED AID
Pledge
Country Pledge [US$] Source Quotient
----------------- -------------- ------------ --------
Australia 27,000,000 news.com 46.58
Cambodia 40,000 Al Jezeera 1.36
Canada 33,000,000 Al Jezeera 34.25
China 60,420,000 ABC News 9.39
EU 45,000,000 news.com --
EU Countries 284,199,886 -- --
Total EU 329,199,886 -- 9.80
India 23,000,000 Al Jezeera 7.42
Japan 40,000,000 Al Jezeera 11.17
Kuwait 2,100,000 Sympatico 55.27
Norway 8,170,000 news.com 48.34
Qatar 10,000,000 Al Jezeera Unknown
Saudi Arabia 10,000,000 news.com 35.57
Singapore 1,200,000 Sympatico 11.53
South Korea 2,000,000 news.com 2.33
Taiwan 5,250,000 news.com Unknown
UAE 2,000,000 Sympatico Unknown
US 350,000,000 ABC News 32.20
INDIVIDUAL EU COUNTRIES
Country Pledge Source
----------------- -------------- ------------
Austria 1,360,000 news.com
Britain 96,000,000 The Australian
Czech Republic 445,760 news.com
Denmark 15,590,000 news.com
Finland 3,410,000 news.com
France 20,442,000 Al Jezeera
Germany 27,000,000 news.com
Greece 204,345 news.com
Italy 4,066,800 The Australian
The Netherlands 2,720,000 news.com
Poland 335,821 news.com
Portugal 11,000,000 The Australian
Slovakia 231,660 Al Jezeera
Slovenia 113,500 Al Jezeera
Spain 68,000,000 Al Jezeera (31 Dec 2004)
-----------------
Total 284,199,886 --
The “Pledge Quotient” is the pledged dollars divided by the GDP (not shown).
Note: All of the caveats from the original posts apply, especially that these are still very rough figures and bound to change. I should add that I had to convert a number of these to US dollars. In doing that, I used Yahoo exchange rates for Euros and AUD and the implicit exchange rates on news.com for Canadian dollars. I used the most current figure that I could find where it was significantly different from the previous ones. (The order is Sympatico, news.com, Al Jezeera, The Australian and ABC News.)
Al Jezeera reported that German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder proposed a debt repayment moratorium for Indonesia and Somalia. Bush is “studying” this. That would seem like a direct way to provide aid in one of the areas hardest hit (Indonesia) and another area that has been struggling (Somalia).
The Australian summarized some of the aid charities have raised. While this is by no means all, here’s a brief list:
British charities (Disasters Emergency Committee):
$49.5 million Australian charities ($US 38,738,700)
Italian charities 11 million euro ($US 14,911,600)
The Netherlands charities 9.3 million euro ($US 12,597,780)
US: The American Red Cross $US 18 million
and CARE USA $US 3.5 million
A number of people have noted that my figures don’t include the aid from Canadian provinces, which is substantial. According to The Australian two Canadian provinces have set aside aid worth $US 10.8 million. The figures I’m quoting are only for central government aid, as near as I can separate it out. I know this isn’t the complete picture, but I think it is representative because even this amount of aid is not in the same ballpark as the government aid. In fact, even if you take this plus the almost $US 88 million in aid from private donations reported in The Australian, it’s dwarfed by the approximately one half billion dollars (now approximately a billion as of noon today) already pledged by governments.
Incidentally, this puts the lie to the faith-based charities premise that if government doesn’t provide assistance to those in need charities will make up the difference. Do we really think that if governments didn’t provide these programs that charities would suddenly grow to more than ten times their current size? Get real.
It also undermines statements that the world is under-appreciating the U.S. contribution because some countries, notably in Scandinavia, are more socialist so their government aid is proportionately higher but people in the U.S. give more through private donations. In fact, private donations in the U.S. don’t make up the difference. We’re lucky that they are running neck and neck with the “stingy” government grant of $15 million. (I’ve seen nowhere that the $20 million line of credit has changed or that the U.S. has added more.
I’m not ignoring Sweden, which has pledged $75.5 million not shown above. I’ll put them in the next update.
You can get the GDP figures that I used from Wikipedia) and added a column with the source of the aid pledges. The original diary is