Tied Aid - Motivations For Tying Aid

Motivations For Tying Aid

In the OECD report The Tying of Aid it was found that the motivations for tying aid were both economical and political. From the economic point of view, the donor country aims to raise its own exports. However, the study found that the exports related to tied aid were minimal. It referred to an earlier study that looked at the relation between exports from nine representative European donors and 32 representative developing countries. That study found that exports connected to tied aid only constituted about 4 percent of the total. The Tying of Aid thus concluded that the more important reason for the practice was political. Historical relations, trade relationships, geopolitical interests and cultural ties, all are examples of the political motivations behind the tying of aid, but according to Jepma, they all boiled down to the same thing:

Although most donors give aid to quite a wide variety of recipients, the importance they attach to individual recipients clearly differs: donors support countries with which they have, or hope to have, strong ties.