PAPERS RELATING TO ASPECTS OF THE FOREIGN
      FINANCIAL POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES
NAC Files, Lot 60D137, Box 367 1
Information Paper Submitted to the National Advisory Council by
                    the Secretary of the Council

CONFIDENTIAL                     [WASHINGTON,] December 16, 1949.
Doe. No. 938
        STATISTICAL SURVEY OF UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
                       POSTWAR FOREIGN AID
  During the period July 1, 1945 through June 30, 1949, the United
States Government made available $27.2 billion for foreign assistance,
of which $23.3 billion were utilized or expended and $3.9 billion re-
mained as an unutilized balance on June 30, 1949. United States
foreign aid utilized in these four years has averaged somewhat less
than $6 billion per year (about one-half billion dollars per month).
There has been no clear trend, either upward or downward, in the
amount of foreign aid utilized; in fact, expenditures for the last two
years of the period under review were identical with those for the
first two, and expenditures in fiscal 1948, the year in which the total
was lowest, were only 15 percent lower than in the peak year of 1949
(see Table I). Preliminary estimates for 1950, including MAP dis-
bursements, point to a level of expenditures on foreign aid of the
same order of magnitude as the annual average for the previous four
years.
  There has, however, been a marked shift in the distribution of
foreign aid between grants and credits (see Table I). While credits,
which amounted to over two-fifths of foreign aid for the four year
period ending June 30, 1949, accounted for more than half of our
foreign assistance in 1946-47, they were less than one-third of the
total in 1948-49, and less than one-fifth in 1949, and in 1950 will

  'The National Advisory Council on International Monetary and Financial
Problems (NAC) was an interdepartmental committee established by the Bretton
Woods Agreements Act of July 31, 1945 (59 Stat. 512). The Act provided for
United States participation in the International Monetary Fund (iMF) and
the
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, or "the
Bank").
The National Advisory Council was to coordinate policies and operations of
the
United States Government with respect to this Government's relations with
the
two Bretton Woods institutions.
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