The G8's Enron accounting

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The meeting of the world's eight most powerful industrialized nations (if you don't count China) has come to an end, and the global development community isn't too happy about the outcome. At issue is the G8's pledge to give $60 billion to fight HIV/AIDS and other heath crises. It appears to be little more than Enron-style accounting.

At least half of the $60 billion figure, for instance, comes from the $30 billion U.S. President George W. Bush had already pledged last week to combat AIDS over the next five years. And, unlike the Bush administration, the G8 isn't specifying a time period during which it will deliver the aid. The development advocacy organization Oxfam had this to say:

The headlines sound impressive but ultimately mean precious little. Instead of delivering what they promised the G8 has tried to get the biggest possible headline number out of the smallest possible aid increase.... Oxfam's calculations, based on the assumption that the money will be delivered over 5 years, show that by 2010 overall aid will only have increased by $23bn."

That's well shy of the $50 billion the G8 had pledged in Gleneagles, Scotland, way back in 2005.