Aidspan Releases Analysis of Pledges and Contributions to the Global Fund

Author:

David Garmaise

Article Number: 1

Analysis includes the use of a “Global Fund donor score”

ABSTRACT The countries whose recent pledges to the Global Fund have been the largest in relation to their gross national income are Sweden, Norway, France, the United Kingdom and Canada, in that order. This is one of the findings of an analysis conducted by Aidspan on pledges and contributions to the Global Fund.

The countries whose recent pledges to the Global Fund have been the largest in relation to their gross national income are Sweden, Norway, France, the United Kingdom and Canada, in that order.

This is one of the findings of an analysis of pledges and contributions conducted by Aidspan. A report on the analysis, entitled “Donors to the Global Fund: Who Gives How Much?”, has been published on the Aidspan website. The analysis was conducted by Bernard Rivers, Aidspan’s Senior Fellow.

To help with the analysis, Aidspan created a “Global Fund donor score,” explained in Table 1.

Table 1: Explanation of Aidspan’s Global Fund donor score

Aidspan then calculated the Global Fund donor score for each of the 30 countries that have the largest economies and that are defined by the World Bank as “high income.” (The definition of “high income” is based on standard of living, not size of economy.) The results are shown in Table 2.

Table 2: The “Global Fund donor scores” for the 30 high-income countries with the largest economies, based on pledges for 2011–2013

It is important to note that the Global Fund donor scores shown in Tables 1 and 2 are based only on direct pledges to the Global Fund. Some of the countries listed also contribute indirectly, via the European Commission (pledges from the European Commission make up 4% of total pledges to the Fund), UNITAID or Debt2Health. Some countries also donate considerable amounts of money for non-Global Fund programmes to fight AIDS, TB and malaria (such as through bilateral aid). Others don’t give much money for the three diseases, but may give to other charitable or development causes.

Three of the countries shown in Table 2 as having a Global Fund donor score of F – Italy, Spain and Ireland – pledged substantially to the Global Fund prior to 2011. Because of their domestic economic difficulties, none of these countries pledged anything for 2011–2013, and each of them failed to fully cover its pledge for at least one year before 2011. However, during 2011–2012, Ireland did make some contributions to cover part of the unpaid portion of its 2010 pledge; and there are signs that Spain may again become a donor to the Global Fund.

Five of the countries shown in Table 2 as having a Global Fund donor score of F – Austria, Czech Republic, Israel, Qatar and United Arab Emirates – have never donated to the Fund.

Based solely on the size of the pledges, and looking now at all donors to the Global Fund, not just the 30 largest economies, the largest pledges for 2011–2013 were made, in decreasing order by the US, France, the UK, Germany, Japan, Canada, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the EC, Sweden, Norway, Australia, Netherlands, Denmark, Russia and Belgium.

During the years 2001–2005, every pledge made to the Global Fund was fully paid. Since then, this has not been the case: $645 million in pledges made to the Global Fund for the years 2006–2011 has not yet been paid. Details are provided in the report.

Table 3 shows the pledges for 2011–2013 made by each of the main donor groups.

Table 3: Pledges to the Global Fund for 2011–2013 from the main donor groups

The private sector provided only 0.3% of total pledges for 2011–2013 (about $10 million annually). However, this does not include (Product) RED, an alliance of various private sector companies, which, without making pledges, contributes about $20 million annually.