ISTANBUL
Turkey broke an assistance record despite global economic crisis in 2011, according to figures of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Turkey was the country that increased its official development assistance in the world in 2011. Turkey's development assistance was up 38.2 percent to 1.3 billion USD from 967 million USD in 2011.
International development assistance was down 2.8 percent to 133.5 billion USD in 2011.
Greece cut down its contribution to OECD development assistance the most with 39.3 percent in 2011. The other countries were Spain, Iceland and the United States, which used to make the highest contribution to the assistance.
The U.S. contribution to the assistance was 30.7 billion USD with 0.9 percent decrease in 2011.
Also, Britain's assistance declined 0.8 percent to 13.7 billion USD.
Moreover, OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria said that the fall of the official development assistance was a source of great concern, coming at a time when developing countries hade been hit by the knock-on effect of the crisis and needed it most.
"Aid is only a fraction of total flows to low income countries, but these hard economic times also mean lower investment and lower exports. I commend the countries that are keeping their commitments in spite of tough fiscal consolidation plans. They show that the crisis should not be used as an excuse to reduce development cooperation contributions," Gurria also said.
(Reporting by Gokhan Kurtaran)
