German Federal Republic

Abstract

Regional economic development is an interesting and at the same time a difficult subject; the field thrown open is a broad one. For this reason I will take the liberty of proposing that we begin by defining the limits of what we would understand by development aid. I will take some extreme examples since they often make things clearer. If the state gives aid in a case of dire necessity, let us say in order to ward off the consequences of a calamity (an earthquake), this is certainly not development aid. If, to take a different case, a private group believes that it should support certain projects, for example if certain groups of banks make special efforts to promote the granting of credit to small and medium-sized traders or the granting of small loans, this help is certainly not development aid. Similarly, the credit which a bank allows an industrial undertaking for the improvement or rationalization of its industrial production is certainly development aid for the undertaking; the latter switches over from less sophisticated production methods to automation, but there is positively no development aid involved in the sense in which we understand the term. Thus by development aid we should understand only those measures which are initiated by a central authority and follow certain officially announced guiding principles or which have been worked out by departments lower down the scale and approved by the senior department.