Malta, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has scored "very poor" in an aid transparency index, in 64th place out of 68 aid donor organisations and countries surveyed. The ensuing report argued that a large majority of the world's donors were not sharing enough information relating to their activities.
Malta, just four places above last place (China), is not a member of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), however is part of the EU's collective commitment to both the EU Transparency Guarantee and the Busan common standard, of which IATI is a core component, the report said.
The report, conducted by Publish What You Fund (a global campaign for transparency over aid), is calling on donors to make more information available in an accessible form.
No comprehensive listing of current aid activities funded by Malta can be found on the Malta Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) website, according to the report.
Malta scored a 6.6 per cent, placing it in the very poor category, and the country scored on just two activity-level indicators, tied aid status and flow type, which are not assessed on a per-activity basis. In addition, Malta scored on just six of 39 indicators, as near to no information on Maltese development cooperation appears to be systematically published. The report states that the MFA declined to comment on these findings, stating that the questions are not suited to assess Maltese Official Development Assistance (a term coined to measure aid).
The report recommends that Malta join IATI and begins to publish to the IATI Standard as soon as possible, to meet the 2015 deadline. "It should publish an ambitious schedule, with specific timelines and delivery targets, aiming towards full implementation of the IATI Standard by the end of 2015".
"It also suggests that Malta develops a national action plan that includes ambitious commitments on aid transparency".
Rachel Rank, director of Publish What You Fund, said that, "The rankings shows that no matter how many international promises are made, and no matter how many speeches there are around openness, a startling amount of organisations are still not publishing what they fund."
The report and the full details on the assessment of Malta's aid transparency can be accessed at: http://ati.publishwhatyoufund.org/index-2014/results/.