"The Government's budgetary prioritizations, including those pertaining to international aid and refugees, are included in the annual Budget Proposals. The Budget Proposal for fiscal 2017 is due to be submitted before the Storting [parliament] in October," the spokeswoman said.
Last summer, when Norway faced a peak in migrant numbers, UDI forecast another 33,000 asylum seekers in 2016 in addition to over 31,000 that came in 2015. Thus the government allocated 9.5 billion krones (about $1.12 billion) to deal with the influx, with a little less than a half from this sum being derived from the international aid budget.
Currently, some lawmakers are proposing to return the money to international long-term aid and relief efforts in poor countries. Others politicians, Foreign Minister Borge Brende among them, suggest that money be spent on elderly care in Norway, arguing that Oslo has already been very generous in terms of aid to poor countries and fragile states.
In 2015, Norway provided over 34 billion krones to poor countries, even slightly exceeding the UN global target of providing above 0.7 percent of GDP to international aid.
