$2 B in aid pledged to RP

CEBU CITY – Foreign aid donors pledged to extend $2 billion in assistance to the Philippines in 2004 as well as dangling an additional $540-million trust fund.

The $2-billion pledge does not include a $540-million "multi-donor trust fund for Mindanao," that will become operational once a peace accord is signed with Muslim separatist rebels in the southern region of Mindanao, President Arroyo said.

The $2 billion in aid was pledged by the governments of Canada, France, Japan, Australia, Germany, South Korea, New Zealand, the United States, Finland, Netherlands and Britain, said Finance Secretary Jose Isidro Camacho and World Bank country director Robert Vance Pulley.

Also contributing are the Asian Development Bank, Saudi Fund Development, European Community, United Nations, World Health Organization and World Bank.

This amount is some 15 percent less than the amount pledged during last year’s consultative group meeting of the Philippines’ foreign aid donors, said Camacho at the close of a two-day gathering in Cebu.

He said attendance at this meeting was not as large as last year because it was held during Ramadan which prevented some potential Muslim donors from coming.

Camacho emphasized that out of the $2 billion already pledged for 2004, $430 million was earmarked for strife-torn Mindanao which has been scarred by decades of separatist rebellion by the country’s Muslim minority.

However, Camacho said that they did not have a breakdown of how much of aid was in loans and how much was in grants. — AFP