Britain to cut aid to some countries, organisations - Reuters Africa

By Adrian Croft

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will announce on Tuesday it is cutting funding to some international aid organisations and will put some others on notice that they risk losing funding if they do not improve their performance.

In a major shake-up of its 6.5 billion pound aid budget, Britain will also stop giving aid to more than a dozen countries while focusing its help on the poorest countries and "fragile" or war-torn states, officials said.

The decisions, to be announced by International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell on Tuesday, follow a nine-month review by Britain's Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of its overseas aid budget, one of the world's biggest.

Overseas development aid is one of the few areas that have been spared sharp public spending cuts aimed at curbing Britain's record peacetime budget deficit. But the coalition is keen to show it is getting value for money.

The coalition's decision to ring-fence overseas aid while cutting public services at home has been criticised by some British newspapers. A poll for the Mail on Sunday last October showed that four out of five British voters thought it was wrong to protect aid spending while cutting defence.

Britain spent 4 billion pounds on bilateral aid in 2009/10 and 2.5 billion through international organisations, such as the European Commission, United Nations and World Bank.

International agencies Britain judges to be poor performers, including some U.N. and World Bank organisations, will be stripped of around 50 million pounds of funding, officials said.

The coalition will boost support to "star performers" such as U.N. children's agency UNICEF, whose British funding will double, and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation.   Continued...