DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION AND SLOVAKIA IN 2009
DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION AND SLOVAKIA IN 2009

Summary/Abstract: The year 2009 was, from the point of view of Slovak official development assistance (ODA or SlovakAid hereafter), the first year of implementing the new Medium-Term Strategy for Official Development Assistance of the Slovak Republic for the years 2009-2013. It was also significant for the efforts to take steps in the desired strategic direction. On the other hand, it also bore the consequences of the hectic transformations made in the previous years as well as of continual personnel changes. Ostensibly it could even be labeled a year of search for a sure footing for the very first step in the direction set by the Medium-Term Strategy. What is, however, left out of this orientation are important pillars such as properly determined systems, a personnel base, evaluations and expert discussion to enable the specific practical implementation of plans. It was at the same time the last year before the expected milestone represented by a commitment to be achieved by Slovakia and other new EU Member States adopted by the Council of the European Union, i.e. to earmark 0.17% of their GDP for development assistance in 2010. All indicators show quite unambiguously that the obligation (just as with the other countries) will not be met on our part. The year 2009 was, inter alia, a year when the winds of the global economic and financial crisis were seen for the very first time within the ODA budget. This was distinctly in evidence as the national budget for 2010 was being drafted: the volume of funds earmarked in the draft budget for the project part of development cooperation was, compared with 2009, reduced by 60%, while several ministries did not plan any financial means at all for development cooperation of their own. Finally, the issue of climate change impacts on our ODA was fully broached in 2009. Although not visible at the moment, a new priority broke into Slovak development assistance that will in an important way influence Slovakia’s thinking in the area of development assistance in the coming years.

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