The Foreign Ministry needs to develop firm guidelines regulating its partnership
with the private sector in providing foreign aid, the comptroller wrote in a
follow-up to a 2004 report on the workings of Mashav.
Mashav is the body
charged with managing and assisting Israeli foreign aid to developing countries.
The aid is primarily in the spheres of agriculture, health, education, the
empowerment of women and community and business development.
The body
also provides humanitarian aid after disasters that do not necessitate the
involvement of the IDF.
Mashav’s aid is generally through running
training seminars either here, or in the host countries. In recent years there
has been a trend toward increasingly involving the private sector, a program
called Private Public Partnership. The effort brings private Israeli companies
into the seminars, helping them gain contacts abroad and pinpoint
entrepreneurial prospects.
According to the comptroller, this is liable
to blur the lines between humanitarian aid and private entrepreneurship, and
there was a critical need for the ministry to draw up clear guidelines and
boundaries.
The report also stated that Israel presently contributed less
than the .07 percent of its GNP that it needed to according to the guidelines of
the OECD, which it joined last September. The report pointed out that Mashav has
recommended that this level be raised to the .17% level asked of all countries
joining the EU.
The report also said that from the period 2008-2010 there
were less “mobile seminars” and long-term emissaries sent abroad to train people
in developing countries than there were during the 2001-2003 period. At the same
time, the number of seminars held inside Israel did remain constant.