Which rich countries help poor ones?
On Monday the Center for Global Development released its updated Commitment to Development Index, ranking 21 rich countries' policies on aid, trade, migration and more.
This year, the Netherlands moved into first, mainly because a conservative government in the formerly number-one Denmark has cut aid spending. Japan remains in last place as the country whose government is least engaged with developing countries. As in the past, the G-7 "leading industrial nations" have not led on the CDI; Germany, top among them, is in 9th place overall.
While we're talking about brave attempts to use indicators to describe complex phenomena...check out Citigroup's Geo-Political Risk Index.
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Brave indeed. It seems that the nations at the top of 2 popular indices have one thing in common: they have relatively small domestic populations.
Here's a quick comparison of the 21 countries rated in the CDI compared to their rating in the 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index: http://statastic.com/2006/08/15/rich-countries-corruption-and-aid-to-the-worlds-poor/
Posted by: Statastico | Aug 16, 2006 7:20:19 AM
The through-the-eye-of-the-needle index
“It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24), and so the Washington-based Center for Global Development should be commended for their through-the-eye-of-the-needle index that ranks 21 rich countries on how likely their policies are to promote development. That said, unfortunately this is yet another wishy-washy instrument in that it dilutes many useful though uncomfortable specificities into much less transparent and more debatable averages.
If you have a thousand movies to see but only time for ten you would sure appreciate a list of what could be considered even on a speculatively basis the 20 best and the 20 worst, so as to have an inkling of which one to see and which to avoid. Well, in terms of the World Bank and other developing agencies, there is nothing that even closely resembles a best and worst program and loan list. In the name of all the poor in real need of developing policies that really work please let us try to get a best and worst list so that we can get some real debate.
Posted by: Per Kurowski | Aug 16, 2006 8:49:08 AM
I fuly agree with the objective assessment. In fact the CBI and their web site www.cbi.nl are very useful and informative.
The CBI is faithfuly using all its resources to help poor countries in the matter of export promotion, marketing and quality control.
Other big giants should learn from a small country and allocate more resources to help poor countries.
Posted by: Subhash Parakh | Oct 11, 2006 10:38:59 AM