Asians find cash hard to get

Press, 30 April 1982, Page 6

Asians find cash hard to get

NZPA-Reuter Manila The developing countries of Asia and the ’Pacific, and some of their more affluent partners in the Asian Development Bank, yesterday voiced deep concern over increasing difficulties in obtaining international aid cash. The Malaysian Finance Minister (Tengku "Razaleigh Hamzah) told the bank’s fifteenth annual meeting that he could understand why some industrialised nations had been reluctant to meet aid commitments in the face, of economic difficulties. But he asked: “Can this responsibility be simply cast off, in total disregard for the millions in the less developed world who are virtually condemned to continual poverty and miserv?”

Sri Lanka’s Finance Minister (Mr Ronnie de Mel) noted that Third World countries were being forced to turn from multilateral organisations to commercial sources for funds, with consequent increases in borrowing costs. “Isn’t this a complete negation of all that has been achieved so far through concessional development assistance?” he asked,- adding that the results affected rich and poor nations by stifling world trade. A Canadian representative, Douglas Lindores, went straight to the heart of an issue to which many referred — the United States’ refusal to maintain its 22 per cent share in the latest replenishment of the A.D.B.’s soft loan “window,” the Asian Development Fund.