ESCWA lauds Kuwait's development aid contributions

AMMAN, April 8 (KUNA) -- The Economic Commission for Western Asia (ECWA) lauded Wednesday Kuwait's development aid contributions, noting that the Gulf state was amongst the pioneering states within this domain.
During the meeting for the Technical Committee on Liberalization of Foreign Trade, Economic Globalization and Financing for Development in the Countries of the ESCWA Region in Amman, the commission said in statements that Kuwait, along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, had contributed a sum of USD 267.6 billion to official development aid in the period between 1975 till 2010.
The meeting noted that such contribution represented around 1.7 percent of the GCC countries' annual national income.
Reacting to the positive remarks, Kuwait's representative at the meeting and Finance Ministry executive Eman Al-Haddad told KUNA that her country's contributions to the development around the world stemmed from Kuwait's keenness on the welfare of people around the globe.
Regarding the current ESCWA meeting which began yesterday, she said that participants were focusing on the staggering USD 85 million annual funding gap which the Arab zone is suffering from, adding that if things were not solve the gap will increase within the upcoming 15 years to USD 3.6 trillion.
On his part, ESCWA's Deputy Executive Secretary for Programme Abdallah Al-Dardari said that the Arab zone needed funding to execute plans beyond 2015.
He stressed that Arabs should have a say at the UN's Third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from July 13th-15th 2015 to ensure that the Arab countries were not left out of the global welfare equation. (end) abu.gta