Trump's administration offers reducing financial help to Southern Caucasus countries

The administration of the US president has offered to reduce financial help to Georgia by 57%, to Armenia – by 67%, and to Azerbaijan – by 90%. This follows from the draft budget of the US State Department for the 2018 financial year.

The draft budget, which provides for a drastic reduction of US financial help to developing countries, was published on Tuesday, May 23. In fact, the 2018 financial year begins on October 1, 2017.

It follows from the document that Georgia will receive 34.1 million US dollars against 80 million in the current financial year. The aid to Armenia will drop from 20.4 to 6.8 million dollars, and Azerbaijan will receive only 1 million dollars, the edition named "Massis Post" has reported today.

The financial aid to developing countries is allocated through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In March, the Donald Trump's administration offered to merge the USAID with the US State Department and at the same time reduce the volume of the support rendered to developing countries by more than a third, the edition "Foreign Policy" wrote on April 24.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.