(26 August 2015) – France hopes to boost funding for development and climate action by linking the French Development Agency with the country’s public financing body.
The French President, François Hollande, announced plans to make the French Development Agency (AFD) and the public financing group Caisse des Dépôts (CDC) work more closely together on Monday 24 August.
“I want to take this opportunity to say that our development policy has to change, has to be reformed. The tools serving this policy must be further strengthened. So I have decided to enact a major reform: to bring the AFD and the CDC group closer together,” the President said at an Ambassadors’ Week meeting in Paris.
“This will give us a real financing agency, as other countries like Germany and Italy have already established, that will be better funded, better equipped, and linked to local communities and businesses, like the Public Investment Bank,” he added.
This preparation is all the more necessary, as French development assistance has fallen substantially in recent years, and even dropped below the European average in 2014. According to the OECD, French development aid fell from 0.5% of gross national product (GNP) in 2010 to 0.36% in 2014. (EurActiv)