Air ticket tax - le bâton magique
Like an excellent magicien, Jacque Chirac is creating extra fortune for France's overseas development assistance (ODA) budget out of nothing with the touch of his bâton magique.
The French President annonced today that France will impose an international tax on air tickets, from next year, in order to finance development, especially on the fight against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. ("Chirac : une taxe sur les billets d'avion pour financer le développement", in Libération, 29 August 2005.)
The idea of the air ticket tax was first proposed during a "high level dialogue meeting on fianancing on development" held in New York in July this year. Apart from France, Algeria, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Spain are also participating in this pilot project.
It means that if you fly from any of these countries, you will be paying this tax. It wasn't clear as to what the tax rate would be, just an indication that it would amount to an average of about 5 euros per economy class flight, 20 euros for business and first class. It is estimated to bring in about 10 billion euros per annum.
A quick fix on France less than perfect record in ODA. Currently France is spending 0.56% of its GNP on ODA. Thanx to some accounting genious, one third of this amount is, in fact, cancellation of debt services payment from poor countries, but it is now counted as expenditure.
Having said that, solidarity with developing countries and developmental problems are always welcome, only that we should not overlook the background story.
It has been 35 years since the UN adopted the resolution affirming that rich countries should progressively increase their spending with a target at reaching 0.7% of their GNP.
For a deeper reality check, see a recent article by Pekka Hirvonen, Stingy Samaritans: Why Recent Increases in Development Aid Fail to Help the Poor, published in the Global Policy Forum, August 2005
The French President annonced today that France will impose an international tax on air tickets, from next year, in order to finance development, especially on the fight against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. ("Chirac : une taxe sur les billets d'avion pour financer le développement", in Libération, 29 August 2005.)
The idea of the air ticket tax was first proposed during a "high level dialogue meeting on fianancing on development" held in New York in July this year. Apart from France, Algeria, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Spain are also participating in this pilot project.
It means that if you fly from any of these countries, you will be paying this tax. It wasn't clear as to what the tax rate would be, just an indication that it would amount to an average of about 5 euros per economy class flight, 20 euros for business and first class. It is estimated to bring in about 10 billion euros per annum.
A quick fix on France less than perfect record in ODA. Currently France is spending 0.56% of its GNP on ODA. Thanx to some accounting genious, one third of this amount is, in fact, cancellation of debt services payment from poor countries, but it is now counted as expenditure.
Having said that, solidarity with developing countries and developmental problems are always welcome, only that we should not overlook the background story.
It has been 35 years since the UN adopted the resolution affirming that rich countries should progressively increase their spending with a target at reaching 0.7% of their GNP.
For a deeper reality check, see a recent article by Pekka Hirvonen, Stingy Samaritans: Why Recent Increases in Development Aid Fail to Help the Poor, published in the Global Policy Forum, August 2005
Categories: Development, Europe
posted by Man Yee at 2:45 pm
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