Brussels, 03/04/2006 (Agence Europe) - Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) have claimed that some EU Member States, wanting to achieve the target of 0.7% of GNI to fight extreme poverty they set themselves in the Millennium goals, are inflating their aid figures by counting again money that had already been allocated. NGOs say that of the sums officially allocated in public aid, nearly 12.5 billion euro was not new money but was, in fact, spent on debt cancellation, housing refugees and education foreign students in European universities. The coalition of European NGOs was pointed the finger of blame particularly at France, Germany and the United Kingdom for most inflating their figures in this way, respectively by 3.50 million euro, 2.96 million euro and 2.26 million euro. “We are challenging those governments to clean up their aid reporting and meet their targets with genuine new money,” said Hetty Kovach of the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad) on behalf of the broader NGO coalition. “What developing countries need is more aid money to save lives and not for donors to save face,” she went on. “Debt cancellation is a form of development aid that is much appreciated by countries which receive it,” responded a Commission spokesman on Monday, adding that “it is not true to claim it is a ploy to avoid giving”. On 4 April, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) will publish the only official figures on development aid, he went on. Although it is allowed by the OECD rules, counting debt cancellation as part of development aid is in contradiction with the 2002 UN Monterrey Convention which called for debt cancellation to be separate from and additional to aid, said the NGOs.