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16 Countries Eligible for New US Funds
By HARRY DUNPHY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Sixteen countries, including eight in Africa, have been designated the first participants in a new program that will provide them with $1 billion.
Under the program, known as the Millennium Challenge Account, the funds go to countries that are deemed to have effective governments and attractive programs for foreign investors and are promoters of projects to meet their people's basic health and education needs.
The countries are Armenia, Benin, Bolivia, Cape Verde, Georgia, Ghana, Honduras, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Senegal, Sri Lanka and Vanuatu, the State Department announced Thursday.
Those 16 were chosen from a list of 63 nations that the department released in February.
Paul Appelgarth, the newly confirmed chief executive officer of the Millennium Challenge Corp., said there were no guarantees the 16 countries announced Thursday would receive funding.
"It depends on the quality of the countries' proposals," he said in a telephone interview. Asked why no major Latin American countries were chosen, Appelgarth said, "A lot of the larger countries were not candidate countries because their per capita income threshold exceeded $1,425 a year."
President Bush outlined the program in March 2002. It sought an extra $5 billion annually starting in 2006, a 50 percent increase over the base foreign aid budget of $10 billion. Earlier this year, Congress approved $1 billion for the program for the fiscal year that began last Oct. 1.
Jamie Drummond, executive director of DATA, an advocacy group for Africa founded by Irish rock star Bono, said Thursday he was delighted half the countries chosen were from that continent.
"The 16 countries chosen have existing plans to use more than twice the $1 billion Congress appropriated this year to get more children into school, build rural health clinics and provide clean water," he said. "Congress ought to fund the president's full $2.5 billion request for next year, when more countries will be eligible."
David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, a hunger relief group, also welcomed the selection of eight African countries "because that is where the hunger is most widespread and on the increase. The MCC has acted as quickly as the law allows and they made good decisions."
Congressional critics and others say the program is too limited in scope and will not do much to help impoverished masses in many of the recipient countries.
Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, has found fault with the Bush program's eligibility criteria and its organizational structure. Otherwise, Lantos said, the proposal is long overdue.
Earlier this year he called the program "ambitious and farsighted" with "the potential of revolutionizing the way the United States promotes democracy and development abroad."
Vietnam did not make the list, possibly because the Bush administration anticipated trouble in Congress from members who object to the authoritarian communist government in Hanoi.
But Bolivia was chosen even though its pro-American president was overthrown last December in a popular uprising. A rising star these days on the Bolivian political scene is Evo Morales, an avowed opponent of free markets.
By HARRY DUNPHY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Sixteen countries, including eight in Africa, have been designated the first participants in a new program that will provide them with $1 billion.
Under the program, known as the Millennium Challenge Account, the funds go to countries that are deemed to have effective governments and attractive programs for foreign investors and are promoters of projects to meet their people's basic health and education needs.
The countries are Armenia, Benin, Bolivia, Cape Verde, Georgia, Ghana, Honduras, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Senegal, Sri Lanka and Vanuatu, the State Department announced Thursday.
Those 16 were chosen from a list of 63 nations that the department released in February.
Paul Appelgarth, the newly confirmed chief executive officer of the Millennium Challenge Corp., said there were no guarantees the 16 countries announced Thursday would receive funding.
"It depends on the quality of the countries' proposals," he said in a telephone interview. Asked why no major Latin American countries were chosen, Appelgarth said, "A lot of the larger countries were not candidate countries because their per capita income threshold exceeded $1,425 a year."
President Bush outlined the program in March 2002. It sought an extra $5 billion annually starting in 2006, a 50 percent increase over the base foreign aid budget of $10 billion. Earlier this year, Congress approved $1 billion for the program for the fiscal year that began last Oct. 1.
Jamie Drummond, executive director of DATA, an advocacy group for Africa founded by Irish rock star Bono, said Thursday he was delighted half the countries chosen were from that continent.
"The 16 countries chosen have existing plans to use more than twice the $1 billion Congress appropriated this year to get more children into school, build rural health clinics and provide clean water," he said. "Congress ought to fund the president's full $2.5 billion request for next year, when more countries will be eligible."
David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, a hunger relief group, also welcomed the selection of eight African countries "because that is where the hunger is most widespread and on the increase. The MCC has acted as quickly as the law allows and they made good decisions."
Congressional critics and others say the program is too limited in scope and will not do much to help impoverished masses in many of the recipient countries.
Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, has found fault with the Bush program's eligibility criteria and its organizational structure. Otherwise, Lantos said, the proposal is long overdue.
Earlier this year he called the program "ambitious and farsighted" with "the potential of revolutionizing the way the United States promotes democracy and development abroad."
Vietnam did not make the list, possibly because the Bush administration anticipated trouble in Congress from members who object to the authoritarian communist government in Hanoi.
But Bolivia was chosen even though its pro-American president was overthrown last December in a popular uprising. A rising star these days on the Bolivian political scene is Evo Morales, an avowed opponent of free markets.
