The British government has just made a significant change in its aid and development policy.
Hitherto, and for some years past, the British aid program has been administered chiefly by a full department called the Department of International Development (DFID), with its own agenda and priorities. But now it is to be absorbed into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the United Kingdom's foreign ministry.
We are talking here about a very large operation, with an annual budget of around £15 billion ($19 billion). This is the third-biggest aid budget in the world (depending on how one measures aid), considerably larger than Japan’s international cooperation program (around $15 billion) and amounting to 0.7 percent of gross national product, enshrined in law, as against 0.28 percent in Japan. The percentage for the United States is lower than that. Only Germany can match anything like the British 0.7 percent.