Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950517123053.19006B-100000@comer100> Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 12:44:32 -0500 From: Jose Benjamin Falck <mailto:jfalck@AG.AUBURN.EDU> Subject: Re: Africa To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L
Please correct if I am wrong but the situation has been that between 1/2 to 3/4 of United States foreign aid goes to military aid to Egypt, Israel and Pakistan. The rest is distributed among the rest of the world. There is going to be a shift of aid flows to the former "communist countries" in Eastern Europe and at the same time with all the budget cutting environment the amount of foreign aid is going to decrease dramatically over the next five years (US has one of the lowest percentages of foreign aid of industrialized nations, about 0.4-0.5% of the GDP). AID is going to be re-structured or going to dissapear in the extreme version of some republican circles.>From the other standpoint, all developing countries need capital to
finance investments in human capital and infrastructure. The question like I wrote in my previous letter is how to direct those flows so that they do not end up in the Swiss or Grand Cayman accounts.Should they be directed to private national or international NGOs?
Should they be ear-marked for specific areas? (if a country considers that this is an interference in their national interests, simply reject the aid and shut up)
Should private investments markets be encouraged as a way of directing investments to the area with least probability of being robbed? (I think of Latinamerica where I come from where there is some private capital markets).
Should international research centers (such as CIMMYT in Mexico, CIAT in Colombia) be incremented in size and numbers, instead as it is happening now where they have had to downsize.?
Can we forget the monster of the debt problem of developing countries? I am not an advocate of a complete forgiveness of debt, but I more in favor of alternative and innovative ways of dealing with debt.
This is what I mean of directing the discussion towards getting into the meat of the aid problem.