During 2007, Venezuela has pledged $8.87 billion in aid, financing, and energy funding to nations in the Caribbean and Latin America. Priority is given to socialist oriented economies.
Nicaragua received the most aid with a receipt of nearly $4.5 billion. Bolivia received the second most aid with approximately $800 million and Haiti with $320 million. Argentina received over $150 million in aid along with a $1 billion Argentina bond purchase by Venezuela which was included in the total.
The itemized list of funding can be found here.
In contrast, the OECD reports United States’ net ODA in 2005 was USD 27.6 billion, a rise of 36.5% in real terms. Its ODA/GNI ratio rose from 0.17% to 0.22%, its highest level since 1986. Apart from debt relief, most of the increase was due to reconstruction and other aid to Iraq (USD 6.9 billion), reconstruction and anti-narcotics programmes in Afghanistan (USD 1.3 billion) and aid to Sub-Saharan Africa (USD 4.2 billion). The combined ODA of the fifteen members of the DAC that are EU members rose 28.5% in real terms to USD 55.7 billion.
The bulk of Venezuela's aid, $6.4 billion, was targeted towards raising petrol production. It seems that Venezuela may be succeeding in creating significant and quantifiable economic returns from their aid. They are essentially vertically integrating their oil production through cross country aid agreements. Additionally, rather than creating a market for political corruption which is occurs when foreign aid is available to rogue nations, Venezuela is creating concrete investment projects that can help expand poor partner nation's ability to tap into natural resources.
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