Aid to Syria plunged by 69 percent after government policy Support for Palestinian refugees in Syria was ended LONDON: The UK government’s slashing of aid last year failed to account for local impacts, with some regional offices facing 50 percent funding cuts, an official audit has found. As a result of the £4.2 billion ($5.5 billion) cuts, the National Audit Office on Thursday said Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office bilateral spending plunged because of other commitments to multilateral aid, The Guardian reported. Bilateral spending — direct country-to-country aid — fell by 69 percent to Syria, 62 percent to Bangladesh and 49 percent to South Sudan. On the ground in Syria as a result of the cuts, support for Palestinian refugees was ended. More than a dozen FCDO country and regional offices in some of the world’s poorest countries faced 50 percent funding cuts compared with the previous year, the NAO said. Many programs that those offices oversaw were ended as a result of the funding cuts. However, UK government ministers warned office officials to avoid discussing program changes with local partners, leaving people in need unaware of the changes. The short-term nature of the aid cuts — announced one month before the government spending review — meant that crucial long-term projects set up by aid partners were immediately ended. These factors meant that the FCDO lacked the ability to track the impacts of cuts worldwide, the NAO said. “The speed and depth of reductions has had an immediate impact locally and the effect on long-term value for money is not yet known,” said Gareth Davies, head of the NAO. “The FCDO must build its understanding of how the spending reductions have affected development outcomes to help it plan its approach to future budget allocations, including a planned return to the 0.7 percent (of gross national income) target.” Abigael Baldoumas, policy and advocacy manager at Bond, a UK development NGO network, said: “We now know just how opaque the process was, how rushed and outsized the cuts to bilateral programs were, and have more detail about where the cuts fell.”