Introduction

Aid-weariness also came at a convenient time for the donors. The recession of the early 1980s was accompanied by powerful pressures to cut public spending and the aid budget was often a soft target for cuts. The first half of the 1980s witnessed a steady decline in the real value of the UK’s aid programme. But a recession is an extraordinarily bad time, from the point of view of poor countries in receipt of aid, for aid flows to fall. This simply adds to the misery caused by dramatic falls in the prices of primary commodity exports, and the return to positive real interest rates on debt.