BILL GATES HOPES OBAMA WILL DOUBLE U.S. ANNUAL INVESTMENT IN FOREIGN AID

PanARMENIAN.Net
04.12.2008 15:11 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Microsoft founder Bill Gates hopes President-elect
Barack Obama and Congress immediately craft a wide-ranging stimulus
package, to help jump-start the nation’s sputtering economy, and
double the United States’ commitment to foreign aid.

"Clearly we need a stimulus that doesn’t undermine the incentive
for businesses to be careful about their spending and making those
correct investments," Gates told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an exclusive
interview airing on The Situation Room on Wednesday and Thursday.

Gates, one of the world’s richest men and founder of the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, is also calling on Obama to increase investments
in the nation’s education system and spur technological advances to
improve agriculture, prevent disease, and promote economic growth in
the world’s poorest nations.

"The key point I’d make is that in addition to that stimulus, you’ve
got to fund the kind of scientific work and educational investments
that could really have us be a much better country as we emerge from
the recession," he said.

On his Web site, Obama has pledged to double the United States’
annual investment in foreign aid to $50 billion by the end of his
first term, with the goal of fully funding debt cancellation for poor
nations and fighting AIDS and global poverty.

Gates said he thinks Obama will live up to that commitment.

"Obviously it’s the Congress that gets to actually vote the final
decision for how the money is spent, but I do think he will get to
that commitment," Gates said. "I am thrilled to be able to see that
people are responding to the success stories. Aid from the United
States did go up in the last eight years."