A First Glance at the 2017 Foreign Aid Request for Latin America

Aid would go up modestly, with most increases for Colombia

The Obama administration sent its last foreign aid budget request to Congress today. While the actual amount is somewhat higher, WOLA identifies US$1,784,379,000 in assistance specified for Latin America and the Caribbean in 2017, based on the preliminary budget documents. This is a 9.5 percent increase over 2015 levels of assistance through these accounts. New aid to Colombia accounts for nearly all of this increase. (US$1,629,467,000—see the table at the end of this memo).

(At this early date, we still lack information about aid through several programs that provide a significant amount of assistance. Some of the missing programs appear in the 2017 Foreign Operations request issued today, but the State Department provides only whole-world or region-wide amounts for them, without breaking them down by country. Other money will come through the Defense Department’s budget, which is a principal source of anti-drug military and police assistance to the region. We are still seeking 2015 totals for these Defense anti-drug accounts; in 2014, though, they added up to US$145.6 million in additional military and police aid.)

From the information we do have now, four overall trends stand out:

1. The “Peace Colombia” assistance package would change the amount and makeup of U.S. assistance, but not radically. Among the programs specified for Colombia in this request, aid would increase by about 25 percent. As Colombia nears a likely peace accord with the FARC guerrillas, a clear majority of proposed U.S. assistance would for the first time go to economic development, or to the country’s civilian institutions. But it is not an overwhelming majority—probably between 50 and 55 percent.

The Economic Support Fund account, which will fund peace-accord implementation efforts like bringing state services to areas of historic guerrilla influence, would increase by US$54 million over 2015 levels, to US$187.3 million. The International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement program, which funds drug interdiction, extension of police presence into rural areas, judicial reform, and probably reintegration of ex-combatants, increases modestly, from US$135 million in 2015 and 2016 to US$143 million. (This account also pays for Colombian personnel to train militaries and police of third countries.) The Foreign Military Financing program, the main non-drug military aid program in this budget, would rise sharply from US$27 million in 2015–16 to US$38.5 million in 2017. The request is vague about the purpose of this additional post-conflict FMF: “FMF will continue to support Colombia’s efforts to ensure that its security gains are irreversible and support the transition of the bilateral relationship toward that of a strategic partnership in a post-accord environment,” it reads.

Though the White House announced US$450 million in new aid to Colombia during President Juan Manuel Santos’s visit last week, the Colombia-specific programs in the 2017 request total only US$370.3 million. It is our understanding that another US$21 million will be delivered as a U.S. contribution to a multilateral de-mining program, and that most of the rest is Defense Department counter-drug / counter-organized crime aid.

2. The Administration would (nearly) repeat the US$750 million that Central America is receiving in 2016. The State Department’s aid request document confusingly states, “our budget… dedicates over $750.6 million—as part of the Administration’s $1.0 billion request for appropriations and financing assistance to Central America.” We have so far been able to identify about US$713.1 million of this amount.

(All amounts in thousands of U.S. dollars)

The “missing” US$35 million is probably in regional accounts that have yet to be broken down by country, as discussed above. Here is the breakdown of aid that we do know about, with Development Assistance and a small portion of military assistance broken down by country, and the rest still in regional accounts.

(All amounts in thousands of U.S. dollars)

3. Assistance specified in the request for Mexico would drop by 18 percent. Nearly all of the decrease would come from the International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement program (INCLE), which funds police and judicial reform, among other programs to improve public security and to interdict drugs and migrants. INCLE assistance totaled US$110 million in 2015, dropped to US$100 million in 2016, and would fall to US$80 million in the 2017 aid request. INCLE is a principal source of U.S. support for Mexico’s “Southern Border Program” and migration authorities. Very little of it supports Mexico’s armed forces; most of that aid goes through Defense Department-administered accounts that do not appear in this request, and for which we still lack information about 2015 assistance. In 2014, however, the Defense budget provided US$44.6 million in counter-drug aid to Mexico.

4. From 2015 to 2017, the biggest increases and decreases in aid to countries receiving over US$20 million are as follows:

• El Salvador, +89% (+US$87,982,000)
• Honduras, +48% (+US$34,464,000)
• Guatemala, +33% (+US$32,920,000)
• Colombia, +25% (+US$73,612,000)
• Peru, -3% (-US$2,869,000)
• Haiti, -8% (-US$18,235,000)
• Mexico, -18% (-US$28,754,000)

(All amounts in thousands of U.S. dollars)