The European NGO confederation for relief and development, Concord, is calling on Malta to be more transparent on its overseas development aid and suspects the island is inflating its figures.
In its annual report for 2009, the confederation recommends that the Maltese government should start providing more details about the money being spent to help sub-standard and poor countries and make a clear distinction between development funds and expenses related to irregular immigration.
The report, Aid Watch, claims the aid includes expenses related to irregular migration and students from developing countries, which it says should not be counted as ODA. "Unfortunately, detailed information had not been made available and the real extent of the problem remains unclear," the report states.
Concord and its Maltese affiliate NGO, Skop, said that in 2009 Malta had again failed to give a breakdown of the 0.2 per cent of gross national income (GNI) the island claimed to be allocating to development aid, despite previous calls for such information.
It also complained "there are no traces of the 43 per cent Overseas Development Aid budget increase announced last year".
Under an EU-wide agreement, Malta is meant to increase its ODA levels to 0.33 per cent of GNI by 2015.
Although Malta's overseas development policy included a short section on fostering gender equality, because this was crucial to poverty reduction, the NGOs were still "unaware of programmes or initiatives to implement policy-related gender specific development measures".
Aid transparency is highlighted in the report as one of the main challenges facing Malta. "Despite several requests over the past years, and the commitments made by the government, a breakdown of aid figures has never been made available."
At the same time, the NGOs acknowledged a better relationship with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responsible for Malta's development aid. Over the past two years, the ministry and Skop had engaged in structured dialogue which contributed to improvements in terms of collaboration and exchange of opinions.
A ministry spokesman said it had "nothing new" to add to what it had already said in the past on development aid and referred the newspaper to reports it had issued highlighting the main areas where development aid was being spent.
Malta and Cyprus were the only two of the EU's new member states that had already met their ODA target for 2010, it said, adding that the island's ODA disbursements increased from 0.13 per cent of GNI in 2003 to 0.2 per cent in 2009.
Among the beneficiaries last year were Unicef, the UN general trust fund for Somalia and the Red Cross. NGO projects in various parts of the world also benefitted from Maltese development funds including in the Palestinian territories, Kenya, Peru and Ethiopia, the ministry said.