§ Mr. BattleTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in which year the additional resources for the Commonwealth Development Corporation announced in November 1992 will be made available; whether the money will be drawn on the existing Overseas Development Administration's budget; and whether it will be classified as official development assistance.
§ Mr. Lennox-BoydIn November 1992 we announced that certain changes in the financing arrangements for CDC would result in up to £50 million of additional resources being made available to the overseas aid effort as a whole. Part of this arises from the decision to waive interest due on outstanding aid loans from 1 April 1994, which would otherwise accrue to the Consolidated Fund. This will increase the amount of self-generated funds retained within CDC.
We also agreed that CDC should seek to borrow from funds available for some Caribbean basin initiative countries, known as "936" funds, provided the borrowing terms meet the Government's normal criteria.
Decisions about the level of new loans from the aid budget for the CDC are made annually. CDC loans to borrowers overseas are not sufficiently concessional to qualify as offical development assistance. Equity investments in developing countries under existing definitions do count as official development assistance.