T.R.A.D.E. Policy Brief No.2

Introduction

International aid to assist developing countries in their efforts to implement economic reforms is not new. However, aid has rarely been a simple transfer of resources from rich to poor countries. Often, aid comes to developing countries attached to a development “toolbox” in the form of aid conditionality. This toolbox traditionally involves neoliberal macroeconomic and trade policy prescriptions in the form of structural adjustment programmes that are more often a reflection of the political and economic ideology of donors than of the economic development priorities of aid-receiving countries. A report by the World Bank states that “[d]onors use aid to advance their values, their commercial interests, their cultural aspirations and their diplomatic and political objectives.” 

Aid for trade is a reflection of the fact that trade liberalization in itself does not automatically.

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