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outside Central Africa. For this purpose we recommend that there should be set up a Central African Loans Council, representative of the central and terri- f The Loans
torial12 588milar to the Loans Counciple.
Council wout Brave the responsibility of considering the requirements for out- side loan finance put forward by the federal and territorial Governments. We recommend that the members of the Loans Council should be of Ministerial or equivalent rank and that it should be empowered under the constitution to take final decisions on priorities between the central and territorial Governments and the size of the loan programme, subject, of course, in the latter case to discussion with His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom before seeking access to the London market.
Co-ordination of Federal and Territorial Economic Policy
56. The Development Commission and the Loans Council would not be purely federal bodies; they would be joint federal-territorial bodies. We believe that, with the Tariff and Economic Advisory Committees, the establish- ment of which we recommend in paragraphs 70 and 77 below, they would provide means for effectively co-ordinating economic and development policy on a Central African basis and securing the smooth working together of both federal and territorial departments concerned with economic matters. In this way the resources of the three territories can, we suggest, be most effectively harnessed to the task of developing Central Africa as a whole for the benefit of all its people. Taking into account the different stages of development in the three territories it should in our view be one of the primary objectives of the development organisation to secure that proper attention is given to the more backward areas so as to ensure that they, along with the more developed regions, may play their full part in the economic life of British Central Africa.
CHAPTER V
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA
57. In Chapter III above we have set out the arguments which have impelled us to prefer federation as the form of closer association which has most to recommend it at the present time. We now give our recommendations on the nature and functions of the central Government of the federation.
58. Our examination of this question has divided itself into two parts. On the one hand we have considered, one by one, the individual services and functions of government in the three territories to decide which are suitable for unification and which should remain in the control of the territorial Govern- ments. On the other hand we have discussed fully the constitution and shape of the central Government, its Legislature, its Ministerial offices, and its constitutional relationship to His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. In reaching conclusions on these questions we have kept in mind the following considerations.
59. In the first place we have realised that if the advantages which we see in a federal system are to be achieved, the federal Government must have authority and prestige and thus be able to act as a focus for a national loyalty above the local or provincial loyalties of the territories which comprise it. It must also have sufficient status to attract to its service, as Ministers or civil servants, men of the calibre needed to guide the federation in its early days. It is therefore essential that the federal Government should from its inception be entrusted with a wide field of services and a high degree of executive responsibility.
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