The Government announced today that a further $3.7billion over three years will be cut from the Australian aid budget. This brings to $11.3billion over five years the savings the Government has achieved over the past 12 months through cuts to the aid program. While we had been anticipating a cut we were shocked by the size. These savings are spread over the 2015-16 to 2017-18 budgets including about $1billion next financial year and $1.35billion over the subsequent years. This will bring our aid budget to about $4billion and a GNI ratio of about 0.22% in 2017-18. This is the lowest GNI ratio for the aid program since records began. I dont know exactly what this means for the programs I manage yet, but because of the are of the world I work in I am anticipating that it will mean reductions in budgets to programs that are supporting children and families in some of the worlds most complex situations: like Gaza, Afghanistan, Syria... australianaid.org
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 20:04:51 +0000