Hope for Poorest of Poor

A replenishment of at least $500 million for the International Fund for Agricultural Development now appears assured--an encouraging development at a moment when foreign-aid donors are under new constraints at the very time when there is more urgent need for help among most of the poor nations.

The oil-producing nations of the Middle East--led by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Arab Emirates--have finally agreed on a contribution thought to be at least $200 million. This in turn is expected to bring American acceptance of a compromise in the burden-sharing so that the oil producers’ share will fall from 42% to 40% of the total, and the industrialized nations will increase their share from 58% to 60%. The U.S. share would be 17%.

Washington had been resisting for two years any change in the shares--for good reason. This is the only major fund of its sort in which the oil producers have been, from the start, heavily committed. When the fund was first conceived more than a decade ago, the oil producers were to pay half the total. The declining oil market and falling oil prices of recent years have reduced the ability of the oil nations to meet the commitment originally proposed, however. The United States now appears ready to accept the compromise, accepted earlier by its other industrial-nation partners.

IFAD has an importance beyond its role as a major channel of oil exporters’ funds. It is the only international aid program targeted on poor farmers in the developing nations. That gives it a special importance in the global effort to address the problem of hunger, currently at a crisis level in Africa.

The need for money is apparent. The fund has allocated almost all the $2.1 billion donated since it went into operation in 1977. The new replenishment was to have been at the level of $1 billion, but resistance from the oil-exporting nations has forced reductions in that level. Final negotiations will be held on Jan. 18, just before the governing council of IFAD convenes on Jan. 22. It now appears that the council will be able to confirm on that occasion the continuation of the essential work of IFAD for three more years. That will bring some hope to the poorest among the world’s poor.

Members of Congress appropriated $30 million for IFAD in the current year in anticipation of a compromise, even though no funds had been included in President Reagan’s budget. That was farsighted and helpful. All foreign-aid funds remain vulnerable, however, to the massive cuts implicit in the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings bill, intended to enforce deficit reduction commencing this year, that was adopted last month. If the President persists in refusing tax increases, the required cuts will imperil virtually all foreign assistance programs, with particularly serious consequences for the African nations that have been facing famine as a consequence of drought.