O.P.E.C. meeting to set aid programme

Press, 7 August 1976, Page 6

O.P.E.C. meeting to set aid programme

Finance ministers from oil-producing countries will meet in Vienna today to discuss the allocation of SUSBOOM they have earmarked this year for aid to developing countries. Three months ago the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries announced it would give half of the budget to the International Fund for Agricultural Development — provided industrialised nations contributed the other SUS6OOM. The West has so far pledged SUSS3OM and the United Nations SecretaryGeneral (Dr Kurt Waldheim) has appealed to al! countries involved, including O.P.E.C. to meet the SUS7OM gap.

Mr Mohammad Yeganeh, chairman of O.P.E.C.’s 13member Board of Fund Governors, said oil exporting nations would not raise their agreed contribution and would hold back their BUS4OOM share until Western industrialised nations guaranteed the total would be met.

The remaining SUS4OOM of the O.P.E.C. aid budget will be channelled into longterm, interest-free loans to developing countries to help meet their balance of payments deficits and finance development projects. Detailed proposals after the two-day Vienna meeting on where the money should go will be considered by the fund’s board of governors,

due to meet in Vienna tomorrow. O.P.E.C. has already decided that priority will be given to 45 countries the United Nations has cited as having most serious balance-of-payments problems. Massive security precautions accompanied the arrival and departure of the finance ministers on their second day of discussions yesterday at Vienna’s historic Hofburg Palace. It is the first time the organisation’s ministers have met here since 10 of their number were taken hostage in a guerrilla raid in December. And Austria is making every effort to dissuade O.P.E.C. from taking its headquarters out of Vienna.