Ungenerous OPEC

With frightening memories of December's terrorist kidnaping of OPEC oil ministers in Vienna still fresh, finance ministers of the oil producers' cartel met last week in Paris instead, under heavy guard. They agreed to set up an $800 million fund to make longterm, interest-free loans to less-developed countries, OPEC'S first gesture as a group to help poor nations that are afflicted with high oil bills. The fund's main backers, Iran and Venezuela, originally proposed $1 billion a year for five years. Instead, the fund will exist for only a year, and Indonesia and Ecuador said that they could not afford to contribute. Overall, OPEC nations seem to feel that they are doing more than their share to help less developed countries.

Are they? Without question, the world's poorest countries have suffered most from the quintupling of oil prices since the fall of 1973. Writing in the January issue of Foreign Affairs, Maurice J. Williams, head of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, figures that the aggregate balance of payments deficit of non-OPEC developing nations ballooned from $11.3 billion in 1973 to about $42 billion last year. A big reason: these countries are paying $13 billion more a year for oil than they were in 1973. They may well need about $20 billion annually in capital aid through the rest of the 1970s.

No Break. The oil exporters have refused to give their poorest customers a price break, preferring to help out through direct grants and loans, plus investments in such agencies as the World Bank. OPEC members note that their aid expenditures have made up a higher proportion of their own G.N.P.s than have the contributions of industrialized countries. But the OPEC nations have run staggering cash surpluses and are in a far better position to give.

Moreover, the figures for OPEC aid are somewhat misleading. In 1975 OPEC aid of all kinds totaled about $6 billion. But almost two-thirds of the direct OPEC contributions in 1974 and 1975 went to Egypt and Syria (both net exporters of oil), for obvious political reasons. Indeed, less than 10% of the direct assistance granted by OPEC members goes to non-Moslem countries, and 18 of the 42 countries designated by the U.N. as "most seriously affected" by high oil prices have received no aid at all from OPEC members.

Nor is OPEC's generosity likely to increase. According to a new study by Morgan Guaranty Trust Co., the collective surplus of OPEC nations plunged from $62 billion in 1974 to $29 billion in 1975. That drastic rate of decline will diminish as world demand for petroleum picks up again, but it appears that for many oil producers the annual payments surpluses have peaked--and so might their aid commitment.

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