A new foreign aid reform bill — the Economic Growth and Development Act — is likely to be introduced in the United States House of Representatives in March.
Authored by Republican Rep. Ted Yoho from Florida, the bill would require President Donald Trump to establish an interagency mechanism to help the private sector participate in U.S. development assistance programs.
A similar bill was proposed in the Senate last year by Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson and was referred to the Foreign Relations Committee. The previous administration’s President’s Global Development Council also recommended a coordinated mechanism for the private sector in an April 2014 report. It called for the creation of a U.S. development finance bank to serve as a “‘one-stop storefront’ that receives business inquiries through a single portal and responds to these opportunities quickly and in a coordinated fashion.”
About the author
Adva Saldinger@AdvaSal
Adva Saldinger is a Senior Reporter at Devex where she covers development finance, as well as U.S. foreign aid policy. Adva explores the role the private sector and private capital play in development and authors the weekly Devex Invested newsletter bringing the latest news on the role of business and finance in addressing global challenges. A journalist with more than 10 years of experience, she has worked at several newspapers in the U.S. and lived in both Ghana and South Africa.
