§ Ann ClwydTo ask the President of the Board of Trade, pursuant to her answer to the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) of 27 November 1997,Official Report, column 645, if she will list the assessments made by (a) ECGD and (b) other relevant agencies on the risks of extending the export credits against which claims have been made by manufacturers and not recovered from the Governments of (i) Venezuela, (ii) Jordan, (iii) Kenya, (iv) Egypt and (v) Algeria. [39267]
§ Mrs. Roche(a) All ECGD's risk assessments are based on analysis of the economic and political factors which influence an individual country's ability and willingness to meet its external debt commitments. Any
Research council and year Project grants Programme grants Special grants Studentships Fellowships Biotechnology and biological Sciences 1995 13.4 14.1 24.8 45 n/a 1996 14.5 16.1 20.2 46 31.0 1997 14.3 16.3 22.1 50 29.3 Engineering and physical sciences 1995 4.9 — n/a 21.4 7.8 1996 4.7 — n/a 21.6 6.8 1997 6.8 — 19.3 23.3 8.6 Economic and social 1995 n/a n/a n/a 47 n/a 1996 n/a n/a n/a 49 n/a 1997 34 n/a n/a 52 n/a Medical 1995 18 13 n/a 54 33 1996 23 26 n/a 54 42 1997 22 9 n/a 57 n/a Natural environment 1995 n/a n/a n/a n/a 21 1996 n/a n/a n/a n/a 15 1997 8 9 n/a n/a 26 Particle physics and astronomy 1995 5 — n/a 21 11 1996 4 — n/a 16 15 1997 7 — n/a 15 16 Notes:
1. The EPSRC and PPARC do not distinguish project from programme grants. In addition, the EPSRC figure for these grants and for the special grants is the percentage of applications by women in applications where the gender is known
2. NERC figures for project grants represent NERC non-thematic (responsive) grants, and for programme grants NERC thematic (directed) grants
3. Some Councils do not run special grants intended for new investigators, or are only in the first year of doing so
4. There are no data for studentship applications because, with the exception of the ESRC research studentships, the Research Councils allocate studentships by quota to institutions which are responsible for the subsequent award. The figures given are the percentage of studentships awarded to women, with the exception of the ESRC which shows the percentage of applications for research studentships for women.
188Wvulnerability to political risks, such as civil wars, coups, etc., is also taken into account. In the cases of Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, and Venezuela the risk assessments made prior to the issue of the guarantees led us to take the view that these countries had the capacity and willingness to pay, and the decision was taken to issue the guarantees. However, despite best endeavours at judging the long-term risk some countries can still default on their commitments for reasons which are outside ECGD's control (for example unforeseen economic shocks such as oil price falls).
(b) ECGD considers a wide variety of country information and risk assessments from other relevant agencies such as the International Monetary Fund, The World Bank, and Export Credit Agencies. Information from these agencies helps to inform ECGD's own assessment of the economic and political risks.