TNAG-0289-FCO40-325-Departmental-briefs-on-Hong-Kong-1971 — Page 188

favour of the dependencies is apparent. For example the figure of aid for St. Helena was over £80 per head, for the Turks and Caicos Islands £69 per head, for Montserrat £22 per head, and for the

Solomon Islands £20 per head, all of which are far in excess of the

comparable figures for the independent countries of the developing

world.

16.

In the capital aid field I am happy to be able to congratulate

our predecessors in office. There was indeed a dramatic upward rise

in aid disbursements in the dependencies over the four years prior to 1969. To give one example, the capital aid for the Pacific

dependencies almost doubled in that period. Looking to the future, present plans provide, over the coming four years, for the dependencies as a whole, a further increase of some 28 per cent.

17.

In the time available to me I cannot catalogue all the many

ways in which development has been hastened in the territories that

we are considering, but one or two examples may be helpful.

18.

In the Caribbean region many of the problems and the

professional skills required to solve them are common. With this in mind the ODA (and its predecessors) has since 1966 maintained a

British Development Division in the Caribbean based in Barbados. This

is, in effect, a regional development agency whose task is to ensure

the effective deployment of the British aid effort in the region and

to provide technical advice to the goverments of the area. It has

experienced technical and professional staff, considerable delegated powers and widespread contacts with the island governments and with other donors, including the newly-formed Caribbean Development Bank,

also situated in Barbados. It is, therefore, able to take a regional

view on all appropriate issues and is able to provide a continuous stream of expertise. The help of the Development Division is available to the Dependencies in preparing applications for aid, devising terms of reference for technical assistance missions, briefing experts, supervising works and assignments and evaluating results.

19.

In the Pacific, where the economic problems caused by small territorial populations living in tiny communities spread thinly over thousands of square miles of ocean are enormously difficult to solve, there is no Development Division. But for the past two

/years

7.