Budget support makes up 17 percent of total aid to the Pacific, double the global average.
The statistic surprised attendees at Thursday’s 2015 Pacific Update conference in Fiji, revealing the staggering reliance the Pacific now has on bilateral and multilateral arrangements as part of their annual revenue.
Matthew Dornan, research fellow at the Australian National University’s Development Policy Center, told the audience that in some parts of the Pacific, this reliance on budget support is more significant than others — budget support accounts for 36 percent of Tonga’s budget, for instance, and 30 percent of Tuvalu’s.