‘Encouraging’ Results In U.N. Aid Projects

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29716, 9 January 1962, Page 11

‘Encouraging’ Results In U.N. Aid Projects

(NZ.P.A -Reuter—Copyright)

NEW YORK, January 8.

The 18-member governing council of the United Nations Special Fund will meet in New York today to consider what is expected to be a record programme of aid to under-developed countries. The new programme, to be recommended by the former Marshall Plan administrator and managing director of the Fund, Mr Paul Hoffman, will be additional to 157 projects already authorised at earlier sessions of the council.

In a progress report to the council. Mr Hoffman said that result achieved in a good number of projects were “indeed encouraging."

By the end of last year, ne said, the start of operations had been authorised for 106 projects, while projects in Argentina and Nigeria were completed. A total of 264 full-time experts for 65 projects were in the field and agreements with 20 firms and organisations to serve as sub-con-tractors for 16 projects had been negotiated. Examples Given

Mr Hoffman s report named operations in Ghana, Morocco and Nigeria as examples of the fund’s worth. In Ghana, in co-operation with the government, the Fund was conducting field surveys and experimentation to determine the physical and economic feasibility of growing crops on a large scale in the Lower Volta River plain.

On the basis of information obtained during the first phase of the project, some 45 000 acres of land were selected for detailed investigation

By the middle of last year, detailed topographic maps had been prepared for about half the acreage in the selected areas, and a preliminary design of the irrigation, drainage and flood control works had been started.

Experimental plots under irrigation since mid-1960 indicated that rice was the most promising crop for the area, with sugar cane and market gardening also considered to be feasible. Mr Hoffman said A project designed to determine the feasibility of con. structing a dam on the Niger River for power generation, improvement of navigation, flood control and irrigation was completed last March on schedule, Mr Hoffman said in his report on Nigeria. Part of a comprehensive ■study of a scheme for the

multi-purpose development of the Niger River system, the survey recommended that, as a first stage in the over-all scheme, a dam should be built across the Niger at Kainji. In addition to electric power generation, the scheme would allow for the progressive development of navigation, provide for flood control and permit expansion of agriculture and fish production.

The report recommended an immediate start, with a view to producing electric power by 1966. In Morocco, as part of a five-year plan, the Government had established an engineering school at Rabat. Members of the governing council are: Brazil, Britain. Canada. France, Ghana. Guatemala. Holland, Indonesia. Italy. Japan. Jugoslavia, Mexico. Pakistan. Senegal. Sweden, Thailand, the Soviet Union and the United States.