§ Mr. Wallasked the Minister of Overseas Development if she will make a statement on the aid programme for South Vietnam.
§ Mr. WhitakerAid provided by my Department to South Vietnam under bilateral arrangements, which is wholly civilian, amounts to an estimated expenditure of £330,000 in the course of the current financial year, exclusive of £68,000 provided for police training provided by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Of each £100 of this aid in 1964–66, £72.5 was tied to British goods or otherwise resulted in direct spending on British goods and services. Part of this may, however, have been spent on goods which would have been purchased from the United Kingdom in any case, thus liberating foreign exchange of which the recipients will tend to spend only a part in the United Kingdom. The rest included the expenditure of technical assistance personnel in developing countries and budgetary aid which could not be identified with direct purchases in the United Kingdom. There is no reason to suppose that the pattern was markedly different in 1966–68.