The Press WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1968. Administering The N.Z. Aid Programme

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31597, 7 February 1968, Page 12

The Press WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1968. Administering The N.Z. Aid Programme

The report of the conference sponsored by the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs to consider New Zealand’s efforts in international aid raises no doubts about the importance of these efforts; indeed, it urges that New Zealand’s programme should be enlarged and suggests seven ways, none of them very revolutionary, in which the programme should be expanded. The conference’s appeal for increased aid was persuasively based on the contention that over the last decade the real value of official New Zealand aid to countries other than the Cook Islands has declined until it now amounts to only 0.25 per cent of the national income compared with an average of 0.66 per cent for Western European countries and the United States. Although the call for greater effort is its main message the report has another theme: New Zealand’s aid programme is not as well organised as it might be and the administrative machinery is not equal to the demands that would be made upon it by an enlarged programme. The conference also questioned some aspects of the Government’s policy on aid. Noting the disparity between aid for the Cook Islands and aid for Western Samoa, the conference concluded that much more assistance, perhaps by way of loan guarantees, should be offered to Western Samoa; and it remarked that New Zealand cannot ignore the immense problems already arising in Fiji. It records its opinion that New Zealand has a compelling duty towards British territories in the South Pacific, which, because of their distance from Britain, need to strengthen their relationships with the nearer Commonwealth countries. The conference was not satisfied that the arrangements for the welfare of visiting students are yet adequate; and it found that the Government’s process of evaluating aid projects is intermittent rather than systematic and continuing.

Although the cost of projects undertaken by voluntary organisations tends to be much lower than that of official aid schemes, the conference was divided on whether more Government aid should be channelled through voluntary organisations. The report, indeed, fails to offer any specific guidance on what should be done about most of the problems discussed at the conference. Perhaps this failure lends weight to one recommendation firmly put forward: that the Government should consider establishing a career service within the Department of External Affairs to administer the aid programme and to employ technical and field workers who would execute the official programme and assist voluntary organisations. '