209. Information Memorandum From the Counselor of the Agency for International Development (Kimball) to the Administrator of the Agency for International Development (McPherson)1
SUBJECT
- Agency Strategic Plan
This second try by PPC to write an outline for an Agency Strategic Plan reads like a liberal Democrat manifesto on what foreign aid should be about.2 The essence is contained in III What AID is Trying to Achieve.3 It clearly conveys the idea that most of the problems of the poor stem from a lack of social services. I thought that notion was obsolete by now.
I believe our basic theme should be as follows:
1. People can meet their basic human needs when they are earning adequate incomes through productive employment.
2. A.I.D.’s preeminent objective is to increase employment and incomes through increasing productivity.
3. Meeting this objective will require action in a number of areas, e.g., improved health, enhanced skills and greater efficiency in the use of energy.
[Page 583]4. The best means of enhancing productivity are through:
a. Changes in economic policy which emphasize comparative advantage and greater efficiency in the use of resources;
b. Reliance on competitive market forces and the private sector;
c. Creation and adaptation of new technologies, and;
d. Establishment of systems, processes and institutions which ensure that a, b and c above are a continuous effort.
A side issue in the paper is the goal of “achieving basic stabilization and attacking financial disequilibrium.” I suppose this has become a goal because so many Missions have become party to, in one way or another, IMF stabilization programs. Financial stability, like political stability, is a required pre-condition for development but isn’t a development goal. That we use ESF to promote stabilization isn’t a reason for including it as a goal any more than it would be for including political stability as a goal.
Also, one does not “attack hunger.” Hunger is the result of inadequate employment and incomes or lack of agricultural productivity or both. We can “attack hunger” by straightforward dole feeding but that is not what this Agency is about.