Inter Press Service - September 13, 2005
Marwaan Macan-Markar

That contribution, which in 2003 made up 0.13 percent of Thailand's gross national income, places it in the same league as developed nations like the United States and Japan in terms of the percentage of ODA the richer nations give to the world's poor, states the report released here Tuesday.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the U.S. and Japan give below 0.2 percent of their GNI as their ODA contributions, while the top three givers are Norway, Luxembourg and Denmark, all of which give above 0.8 percent of their GNI as ODA.

The major recipients of Thai ODA have been Laos, Cambodia, Burma and the Maldives, states the 62-page report, 'Global Partnership for Development,' which chronicles Thailand's contribution towards the eighth U.N. Millennium Development Goal (MDG).

That goal -- which called on developed countries to help developing countries through development aid - is part of eight time-bound goals government leaders pledged to achieve by 2015.

Among those pledges made at a U.N. summit in 2000 were to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by halving the number of the more than one billion people who were living on less than one U.S. dollar in 1990. Goal four was to reduce by two thirds the under-five mortality rate.

"The Thailand report sends a very strong signal that aid is not just about rich countries helping the poor countries, but also about countries of the South helping each other," said Joana Merlin-Scholtes, the U.N. resident coordinator in Thailand.

Thailand's immediate neighbour to its east, land-locked Laos, gets nearly 50 percent of the aid in grants and concessionary loans, said Manop Merkprayoonthong, who presented the report on behalf of the Thai government.

The bulk of the assistance is to support basic infrastructure development, including the building of roads, bridges, dams and power stations. "This type of infrastructure is an important part of long-term economic development helping to pave the way for the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals in these countries," states the report.

In Laos, for instance, Thai development assistance is being channelled to build a 228 kilometers stretch of road that will be part of sweeping roadway that will connect the southern Chinese city of Kunming with Bangkok.

The Thai ODA package, however, is largely tied aid, which places expectations on the recipient country to buy goods and services related to the development project from Thailand.

Yet such restrictions are in keeping with the path often followed by countries entering into the league of nations that give ODA, says Hakan Bjorkman, the deputy head of the UNDP office in Thailand. "If you look at the history of donor countries, emerging donors have tied aid at the beginning. Today even the U.S. and Australia still have a policy of a high percent of tied aid."

Hints about Thailand's success as a middle-income country emerged last year, when a report about this South-east Asian country's progress towards achieving the eight MDGs declared that Thailand will meet its commitments well in advance of the 2015 deadline.

In addition to dramatically bringing down the numbers living below the poverty line here, the country also scored successes in the other goals such as reversing the spread of the killer disease HIV.

In 1991, the new HIV infection rates were 140,000 and Thailand, which was the worst hit among the South-east Asian countries at that time, was expected to have over eight million people infected with the disease by 2005.

Yet intensive public health campaigns, including a widely publicised condom promotion drive, has seen new HIV infection rates drop to 20,000 new cases for 2004. Currently, the total number of people living with HIV is an estimated 604,000 people.

And in an effort to help poorer countries in the battle against AIDS, Thailand joined the ranks of other developing countries like India to produce and export cheaper generic anti-AIDS drugs.

Similar policies to help least developed countries on the trade front also reflects Thailand's south-south message, says Bjorkman, pointing to the "unfair world trade system that is rigged against poor countries."

The U.S. imposes only a 1.2 percent tariff barrier for goods imported from high-income countries, while placing a 13.6 percent tariff barrier on goods imported from least developed countries, he added, citing a study contained in a just released UNDP report.

Thailand, by contrast, has a friendlier tariff barrier to goods it imports from least developed countries (LDCs), at 1.1 percent, according to Tuesday's report.

Other Asian countries are not as open to exports from LDCs, with China imposing a 4.3 percent tariff barrier, Indonesia 4.3 percent tariff rate, South Korea 5.4 percent tariff rate, Vietnam a 7.5 percent tariff rate and India a 26.3 percent tariff rate.

"We just realised that Thailand has done a great deal (towards helping LDCs) than we recognised," said Wisran Pupphavesa, director of the Bangkok-based Centre for International Economics and Development Studies.

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