"
The Report and Accounts are for the year ended
December 1971 but later information has been
included where it is significant.
PART I GENERAL REVIEW
1 In the middle of this year I will cease to be
Chairman of the Commonwealth Development Corporation
after nearly twelve years. For this Report for
1971 I will, therefore, try and give some conclusions
reached and lessons learnt during these years.
2
In the 1968 Report we claimed that over a life
of 20 years the Corporation had reconciled two
important concepts in the Act of Parliament of
1948 by which it was established.
That Act defined
the Corporation's aim neither as maximum profit nor
as the promotion of British exports but as "the
carrying out of projects for developing resources"
in all the territories in which it was empowered
to operate. Secondly, the Act laid it down that
the Corporation was bound to pay its way taking one
year with another. In the past it has been argued
that these two concepts would in practice prove to
be irreconcilable. be
3 In point of fact CDC first made a profit in 1955
(after early years of losses) and has made a profit
in every year since then. In the last few years
the return earned from projects and investments before
charging interest on capital employed was between
7% and 8%, without making any allowances for the
considerable part of investment represented by projects
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