The Finance Minister and External Affairs Minister, with approval from the Prime Minister will now be authorised to accept bilateral assistance from any other country in addition to the existing bilateral partners.
At present, such powers exist for accepting assistance from bilateral partners like USA, UK, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Russian Federation, European Commission and EU countries outside the G8.
This is after the Cabinet gave its approval for the modification of existing guidelines of the policy on bilateral Official Development Assistance for Development Corporation with bilateral partners on Wednesday.
The Finance Minister and External Affairs Minister can now accept special loans for capital intensive projects and other projects subject to certain conditions including that the assistance should be a minimum of $1 billion in a year, of which at least 50 per cent shall be normal united loans.
Further, not more than 30 per cent of the total value of goods and services should be insisted to be sourced from the funding country.
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.