11:12

Foreign aid is going up ... and then it’s going down again, more than it went up.

The budget papers reveal foreign aid expenditure is expected to increase in real terms by 6.6% from this financial year, 2019-20, before decreasing by 11.8% between 2019-20 and 2022-23.



Foreign aid has been a vexed issue among non-government organisations who have criticised successive cuts or cuts to planned increases by successive governments.

This year’s budget revealed the $2bn Australian infrastructure financing facility for the Pacific will be funded out of the aid budget.

The money is being redirected away from Asia to fund Australia’s push in the Pacific, which is now taking an unprecedented 35% of the aid budget.

Jonathan Pryke (@jonathan_pryke) Pakistan the worst hit with bilateral program more than halved. Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Nepal also cut.

The government pledged last year to maintain foreign aid spending at $4bn annually, before recommencing indexation in 2022-23.

Chief executive of the Australian Council for International Development, Marc Purcell, told Guardian Australia before the budget he expected a steady overall decline, which would put Australia even further away from international goals to commit 0.7% of gross national income to foreign aid. Some countries, such as the UK, have already achieved the goal but Australia has dropped in the rankings of OECD countries from 13th to 19th.

He said the establishment of projects like the infrastructure facility - which was given an additional $12.7m over the forward estimates in the budget – put us at risk of losing influence in Asia.

The budget said the dramatic changes year-on-year reflected the payment cycles of Australia’s contributions to multilateral funds such as the Asian Development Fund and the World Bank’s International Development Association.

The Department of Foreign affairs’ statements reveal this year had $76.7m in multilateral payments, while the following three years required more than $1.86bn.

Finance minister Matthias Cormann had previously flagged around $80bn in savings from the foreign aid budget between now and 2028-29.