Conference Details Foreign Aid "Benefits"

Speakers at a recent conference in New York pointed out to corporate executives what critics of foreign assistance programs have been saying for years - foreign aid spells big business foe multinationals.

On May 29 and 30, International Communications, a London-based publishing firm, hosted a seminar on Business Opportunities from World Aid Projects. Conference organizer Mary Gray reports that representatives of 80 corporations attended, each shelling out $495 for the two-day briefing.

Persuasive promotional literature attracted executives to the gathering. "Export opportunities generated by the massive world aid program are too large for any company to ignore," claims one widely-distributed pamphlet. Officials from the United` Nations, World Bank and regional development banks addressed the participants, offering-advice on how to bid for aid projects and explaining the economic philosophy behind foreign assistance. According to Gray, the other major benefit of attending was "making contacts."

For multinationals, potential returns from the foreign aid bonanza dwarf the conference's steep registration fee. A 1978 U.S. State Department report estimates that every dollar the U.S. has contributed to the World Bank has generated two dollars in business for the U.S. economy. A recent study by the Financial Times, of Canada reveals that in fiscal 1978, Japanese and U.S. firms each grossed $500 million in sales from funds disbursed by the Bank. All told, Western corporations secured roughly 75 percent of Bank funds disbursed last year.

Critics of current foreign aid practices argue that this corporate windfall reflects the inappropriate nature of aid packages ` and the often artificially-inflated prices of goods secured., While the World Bank granted assistance to,' 75 countries in fiscal 1979, for example, 10 countries received 56 percent of total allocations. Only two of these ten were classified by the Bank as "low-income." Others included Brazil, South Korea, and the Philippines-countries pursuing rapid 'industrialization strategies whose needs most closely fit the exporting potential of Western corporations.