266. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson1
Mr. President:
In the attached, Messrs. Gaud, Schultze and Fowler recommend that you approve $35 million in AID loans to Ghana during this calendar year. This would be the U.S. share (about one-third) of a multilateral effort to help the post-Nkrumah government pull itself out of the economic chaos left by Nkrumah.
Charlie Schultze’s memorandum (Tab A)2 is a good short summary of the case for the loan and the Ghanaian self-help record. Bill Gaud’s memorandum (Tab B)3 provides more detail. Joe Fowler has signed off on the measures we would take to minimize the impact on the balance of payments.
The new Ghanaian government has taken really impressive measures to put a very disorderly house into some reasonable economic order. In terms of short-term politics, this government is very pro-American and it is very much in our interests to help it along. In the broader sweep, [Page 466] helping Nkrumah’s successors to clear away the wreckage will go down very well in Africa and throughout the less developed world.
On the donor side, we would be providing no more than our fair share in a 9-country donor club which also includes the World Bank, the OECD, and the UN Development Program. In my view, this is a textbook example of the right way our new emphasis on multilateralism should work.
I second the recommendation that you approve the loan.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Ghana, Vol. III, 3/66–10/68. No classification marking.↩
- Not printed. Budget Director Charles L. Schultze recommended a $20 million program loan in addition to $15 million in P.L. 480 aid in his May 8 memorandum to the President. He noted that the Ghanaian Government had cut expenditures drastically, that imports had been cut 25 percent, and that others, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and the World Bank, were expected to provide an additional $69–$75 million in aid. (Ibid.)↩
- AID Administrator William S. Gaud’s April 24 memorandum to the President is not printed.↩
- This option is checked.↩