The United States has officially suspended 83 percent of the programs of the Agency for International Development (USAID), US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced.
He said that the State Department will retain responsibility for about a thousand contracts at USAID.
The decision to terminate 5,200 contracts followed a six-week review of the work of USAID, an agency that the administration of US President Donald Trump has accused of waste, fraud and advocating a “liberal agenda”, TASS reported.
Rubio thanked the Office of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, for “overdue but historic reform”, saying that USAID contracts “spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, and in some cases even harmed, core US national interests”.
The staff cuts are, however, smaller than announced, as the Trump administration last month spoke of a percentage of 90 percent.
