DEVELOPMENT: Aid Cuts Not to Harm Technical Cooperation – Germany

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Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN, Sep 10 1999 (IPS) - Despite the latest cuts in Germany’s development aid budgets, technical cooperation will continue to be a vital part of German aid policy, vows Development minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul.

Her reassuring words come this week in the midst of a controversy caused by an aid-budget reduction from 4.23 billion to 3.91 billion dollars in 1999, adopted in the context of financial austerity measures. A further cut of nearly 300 million dollars is expected next year.

Wieczorek-Zeul insists that, in spite of the cuts, the ruling Social Democrats are implementing a principled development policy on a global scale. “Its guiding theme is an equitable balancing of interests within and between the world’s regions and between present and future generations.”

“At this rate,” warns Peter Molt, chairman of the Association of German development NGOs (VENRO), “our official development assistance will comprise only 0.2 percent of the Gross National Product (GNP) in the year 2003 – in contrast to 0.7 percent to which Germany has committed itself.”

Presently, the GNP-ODA (official development assistance) ratio is 0.26 percent.

The declining aid budget is a cause of great concern among officials of the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), which has been an important pillar of the country’s development cooperation over the past twenty-five years.

The GTZ, based in Eschborn near Frankfurt, celebrated its silver jubilee Friday (10 September) in the presence of Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa – obviously with a view to stress the importance GTZ attaches to cooperation with Africa in general and South Africa in particular.

According to the agency’s latest annual report, GTZ received an equivalent of some 805 million dollars last year from the government budget, or nearly 20 percent of Germany’s official development assistance – both bilateral and multilateral.

The Development minister’s assurances have been welcomed by GTZ officials. One of the agency’s two directors-general, Bernd Eisenblaetter said this was a recognition of the fact that with the global landscape transforming itself in the 1990s, both the character and profile of technical cooperation had undergone a change.

“As a state enterprise engaged in technical cooperation, GTZ was able to respond quickly to the upheavals and process of change taking place in the world,” said Eisenblaetter.

The focus of the work had switched from plain technical aid to consultancy inputs into fundamental processes of reform and transition in the partner countries because progress in agriculture, the health sector or drinking water supplies depends very largely on whether and to what extent coherent national policies could be put in place and efficient institutions set up to implement them.

The second director general of GTZ, Hans-Dietrich Pallmann, said the agency was active in 130 countries last year. In 2,737 projects 1,572 field staff members worked alongside 8,318 local staff. The GTZ head office employed 1,231 members of staff, 4.1 percent fewer than in 1997.

Pallmann said in international cooperation it was becoming ever more important to pay attention to the appropriate framework conditions. More and more frequently the governments of partner countries were asking for support for structural changes.

“This entails a dialogue on development and technical cooperation. To the extent that technical cooperation is moving into political consultancy, it is taking advantage of the division of tasks between technical cooperation, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the political work of the foundations – and vice versa,” Pallmann said in an interview.

In a joint paper prepared in the run-up to the silver jubilee celebrations Friday the directors say: “Preparations for the accession to the European Union of the countries of central and eastern Europe and the planned free-trade zone of Mediterranean states continue to be of the utmost importance as areas of the agency’s activity.”

GTZ also expects the partnership with the industry – which exists for several years – to grow. With this in view the agency has planned “wide-ranging inter-disciplinary know-how management activities.”

The agency has in fact also supported the establishment of a broad based network of universities, research institutions, international organisations and consultants.

The paper points out that the GTZ will continue to play an important role in promoting peace. This remark is derived from the fact that the agency has built up a store of transferable regional experience in conflict prevention.

“We can mediate between conflicting factions, stabilize reconciliation processes and help pave the way for peace, as demonstrated by a successful resettlement programme for Tuareg refugees in Mali,” the paper says.

Furthermore, adds the paper, GTZ can help to set up appropriate warning systems. However, it adds, even the most optimistic forecasts have to assume that emergency aid, which the GTZ gears to development – will continue to be required in the aftermath of severe political conflicts or disasters.

The two GTZ directors general also say that poverty- eradication will remain the focal theme of development cooperation and subsequently of the GTZ activity.

The “futuristic vision” which they hope would become reality one day is the application of experience gathered in the developing lands to help solve problems in the developed world.

“Even in the industrialised countries there are problems,” said Pallmann, “there are problems which could be solved by methods and instruments that the GTZ has developed in emerging nations.”

A case in point, he said, were the micro-lending schemes designed to help the poor in the Third World. These could surely help to alleviate hardship in Germany too.