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Dept for International Development

Answer

Tom Brake: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how much each low income country has spent on (a) health, (b) education and (c) debt repayment in each year since 2001. [218158] Hilary Benn: The latest World Bank `World Development Indicators' report (2004) shows health expenditure per capita and health expenditure as a percentage of GDP for each country in the world where data is available (Table 2.14). The most recent data are for 2001. I have arranged for a document entitled `Tables for Parliamentary Question UIN 218158' to be deposited in the Libraries of the House. This contains a table on health spend taken from the World Development Indicators online database to which DFID subscribes. Data can also be accessed on line at http://www.worldbank.org/data/databytopic/health. html. Select `Go to Health Topic Indicators' and then the countries or country groupings of interest. The hard copy of the World Development Indicators report (2004) also has in Table 2.10, data on education inputs. This table can be downloaded from http:// www.worldbank.org/data/databytopic/education.html This shows the percentage of total government expenditure on education (2001-02) and public expenditure per primary, secondary and tertiary student (1990-91 and 2001-02). A copy of the table will be deposited in the Library in the document mentioned previously; `Tables for Parliamentary Question UIN 218158'. Information on debt repayment is available in another World Bank publication `Global Development Finance'. The latest edition is from 2004. `Net flows and transfers on debt' are shown in Table 5 of Volume II of this report, which gives `country tables'. This table shows average data for the period 1997-2001 and data for 2002. It will also be deposited in the Library of the House in the document `Tables for Parliamentary Question UIN 218158'. It is available online from: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/ RESEARCH/EXTPROSPECTS/GDFEXT/ GDFEXT2004/0,,contentMDK:20177059~ menuPK:335441~paqePK:64097019~piPK:64096667~ theSitePK:335432.00.html An IMF publication `Government Finance Statistics' provides more data which should allow direct comparison of government expenditure on health and education. This document is available in the House of Commons Library. Hard copies of all the reports mentioned above are available in the House of Commons Library.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

218158; 431 c1066W;431 c1062W

Session

2004-05

Related items

Health Expenditure
Tuesday, 17 January 2006
Written questions
House of Commons

Subjects

Debts Developing countries Health Education National income Public expenditure Repayments

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk