Alternative financing for development: Venezuela and ALBA
By Alejandro Bendana, ALAI (Agencia Latinoamericana de Información)
This opinion paper is critical about the role of aid and it claims that it generates dependence and inequality. It upholds the idea that it is not a question of making the present "aid" modalities more effective, but of substituting present aid system.
As an alternative to the present development order, the paper introduces the Venezuelan led international collaboration scheme known as ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), which pursues a new form of regional integration and greater political unity in order to achieve independent development. The ALBA Bank (created in early 2008) constitutes another piece in the construction of an alternative international economic order.
The author discusses the implications of the ALBA Bank in terms of the 2008 Aid Effectiveness Debate (Accra, 2008) and Financing for Development (Doha, Sep 2008). He stresses that it is not possible to talk about effectiveness in the context of aid used as an instrument of security and foreign policy goals. In this sense, he considers essential to denounce in the debate the failure of the international aid system. Regarding Finance for Development, the author considers the meeting should help to better identify and challenge the international impediments that stand in the way of domestic accumulation and its domestic mobilisation.
According to the author there is a need for a new development model for aid based on solidarity.
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