Alan Beattie reports in today’s London Financial Times on a new study by the Washington DC-based Center for Global Development:

…while two-thirds of rich countries had improved their policies towards poorer nations in the last three years, seven had gone backwards. Nancy Birdsall, president of the CGD, said there was a “slow but steady improvement” but added that the rich countries’ achievements “fell far short of leaders’ soaring rhetoric in 2005, the so-called Year of Development”. 

The index ranks the world’s 21 richest countries according to how their policies on overseas aid, trade, security, the environment, migration, technology and investment help poor nations. Nordic countries, which tend to have large and well managed aid budgets and rigorous environmental safeguards, have scored highly since the index was launched in 2003. This year the Netherlands topped the index, followed by Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

Japan, with a shrinking aid budget, huge trade barriers to rice exports from poor countries and a closed door to migrants, came last by some distance.