§ Mr. Stuart Hollandasked the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether the recently announced change to the definition of "poorest countries" for aid purposes will bring the British definition into line with the definition used by the development assistance committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
§ Mr. RaisonNo. There is no internationally agreed list of the poorest countries. For some years the DAC has used the term low-income countries which currently covers 67 countries. They comprise those defined as least developed countries—a UN-defined list of 37 countries—together with those other countries with an income per head as assessed by the World Bank of less than US$600 in 1980.
The British definition has been and remains more restrictive than the DAC definition. Until the recent change our definition of the "poorest" group was all least developed countries plus those others with a per capita income of less than US$370 in 1980. The new British definition is simply the 50 poorest countries as assessed by the World Bank, excluding states with a population under 100,000 and dependencies.
The reasons for the change were given in a reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. Hannam) on 26 October 1983.—[Vol. 47, c. 104–105.]