Two Lower Middle Income Countries get MCA Nod

The board of the Millennium Challenge Corp. – the Bush administration’s flagship foreign aid initiative – met on Tuesday to decide which countries had been selected for participation in the program. Of the 34 countries that passed the performance indicators, the Board chose to add only 6 new countries to its current list of 17 eligible for MCC funding. Two of the six - El Salvador and Namibia - are lower middle income countries, with average incomes much higher than the countries previously covered by the program. It’s the first time that lower-middle income countries have been selected for the program. Steve Radelet, who leads CGD’s MCA Monitor initiative, had urged the MCC to make the most of its limited funding by focusing on low-income countries. Even so, he said he was pleased that the Board had resisted pressure to expand the number of middle income countries more rapidly. “It could have been worse,” he said. Get the full scoop including a press release with Steve’s analysis and links to the MCC’s own announcements on our MCA Monitor Blog