§ 15. Mrs. Betty WilliamsTo ask the Secretary of State for International Development what steps her Department is taking to promote development and poverty reduction in Serbia. [14160]
§ Clare ShortFollowing the resumption of our bilateral programme in October 2000, we moved quickly to support economic and social reform in Serbia, and to help safeguard the well-being of the poorest people in Serbia. During the winter of 2000 we provided £10 million of emergency aid. We also provided a grant totalling £8.4 million to pay arrears of welfare benefits for the poorest families. We are assisting the Serbian authorities to make key economic, social and governance reforms that are necessary for sustainable and equitable development and poverty reduction. We have supported the development of strategies for reform in privatisation, banking rehabilitation and health care. We have worked closely with the World Bank, with whom we are discussing a joint programme of support to social policy reform. We are funding the work of the Serbian Development Aid Coordination Unit, which is helping the government and donors to use aid effectively.
Our share of the EU's programme in Serbia in 2001 is £25 million. This is additional to the EU emergency programme, started before the fall of Milosevic, of which our share was £20 million.
We will shortly publish a Country Strategy Paper for the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which describes our future plans for Serbia and Montenegro.