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Brazil's foreign-aid programme
Speak softly and carry a blank cheque
In search of soft power, Brazil is turning itself into one of the
world's biggest aid donors. But is it going too far, too fast?

Jul 15th 2010 | BRASILIA

ONE of the most successful post-earthquake initiatives in Haiti is the
expansion of Lèt Agogo (Lots of Milk, in Creole), a dairy
co-operative, into a project encouraging mothers to take their
children to school in exchange for free meals. It is based on Bolsa
Família, a Brazilian welfare scheme, and financed with Brazilian
government money. In Mali cotton yields are soaring at an experimental
farm run by Embrapa, a Brazilian research outfit. Odebrecht, a
Brazilian construction firm, is building much of Angola’s water supply
and is one of the biggest contractors in Africa.

Without attracting much attention, Brazil is fast becoming one of the
world’s biggest providers of help to poor countries. Official figures
do not reflect this. The Brazilian Co-operation Agency (ABC), which
runs “technical assistance” (advisory and scientific projects), has a
budget of just 52m reais ($30m) this year. But studies by Britain’s
Overseas Development Institute and Canada’s International Development
Research Centre estimate that other Brazilian institutions spend 15
times more than ABC’s budget on their own technical-assistance
programmes. The country’s contribution to the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) is $20m-25m a year, but the true value of
the goods and services it provides, thinks the UNDP’s head in Brazil,
is $100m. Add the $300m Brazil gives in kind to the World Food
Programme; a $350m commitment to Haiti; bits and bobs for Gaza; and
the $3.3 billion in commercial loans that Brazilian firms have got in
poor countries since 2008 from the state development bank (BNDES, akin
to China’s state-backed loans), and the value of all Brazilian
development aid broadly defined could reach $4 billion a year (see
table). That is less than China, but similar to generous donors such
as Sweden and Canada—and, unlike theirs, Brazil’s contributions are
soaring. ABC’s spending has trebled since 2008.

This aid effort—though it is not called that by the government—has
wide implications. Lavishing assistance on Africa helps Brazil compete
with China and India for soft-power influence in the developing world.
It also garners support for the country’s lonely quest for a permanent
seat on the UN Security Council. Since rising powers like Brazil will
one day run the world, argues Samuel Pinheiro Guimarães Neto, the
foreign ministry’s secretary-general, they can save trouble later by
reducing poverty in developing countries now.

Moreover, aid makes commercial sense. For example, Brazil is the
world’s most efficient ethanol producer, and wants to create a global
market in the green fuel. But it cannot do so if it is the world’s
only real provider. Spreading ethanol technology to poor countries
creates new suppliers, boosts the chances of a global market and
generates business for Brazilian firms.

The effort matters to the world’s aid industry, too—and not only
because it helps offset the slowdown in aid from traditional donors.
Like China, Brazil does not impose Western-style conditions on
recipients. But, on the whole, western donors worry less about
Brazilian aid than they do over China’s, which they think fosters
corrupt government and bad policy. Brazilian aid is focused more on
social programmes and agriculture, whereas Chinese aid finances roads,
railways and docks in exchange for access to raw materials (though
Brazilian firms are busy snapping up commodities in third-world
nations, too).

Marco Farani, the head of ABC, argues there is a specifically
Brazilian way of doing aid, based on the social programmes that have
accompanied its recent economic success. Brazil has a comparative
advantage, he says, in providing HIV/AIDS treatment to the poor and in
conditional cash-transfer schemes like Bolsa Família. Its
tropical-agriculture research is among the world’s best. But Brazil
also still receives aid so, for good or ill, its aid programme is
eroding the distinction between donors and recipients, thus
undermining the old system of donor-dictated, top-down aid.

And all this has consequences for the West. Some rich-country
governments cautiously welcome what Brazilians call “the diplomacy of
generosity”, just as they do the soft-power ambitions of which aid is
part. After all, if (as seems likely) emerging markets are to become
more influential, Brazil—stable, democratic, at peace with its
neighbours—looks more attractive and tractable than, say, China or
Russia.

But if aid is any guide, a lot will have to change before Brazil
occupies the place in the world that its president, Luiz Inácio Lula
da Silva, aspires to. Brazil seems almost ambivalent about its aid
programme. The country still has large pockets of third-world poverty,
and sending money abroad could be controversial. Brazilian law forbids
giving public money to other governments, so legal contortions are
inevitable. The ABC aid agency is tucked away in the foreign ministry,
where its officials are looked down on as “Elizabeth Arden” diplomats
(London–New York–Paris), not the “Indiana Jones” adventurers required.
At least some aid, for example to Venezuela, seems to have been
inspired by Lula’s soft spot for leftist strongmen. And the
exponential increase in aid—the value of humanitarian contributions
has risen by 20 times in just three years—means that both people and
institutions are being overwhelmed. Stories abound of broken promises,
incompetence and corruption.

Slowly, though, things are changing. Dilma Rousseff, the presidential
candidate from Lula’s party, is thought to be mulling over the idea of
a new development agency to raise aid’s profile, if elected. As Mr
Farani says, Brazil needs more aid officials, with more operational
independence and a greater emphasis on policy aims, not just piecemeal
projects. Until it gets those, Brazil’s aid programme is likely to
remain a global model in waiting—a symbol, perhaps, of the country as
a whole.

Fonte: http://www.economist.com/node/16592455?story_id=16592455&fsrc=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+economist%2Ffull_print_edition+%28The+Economist%3A+Full+print+edition%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Um abraço,

Gerson J. Santos