Head of foreign aid fund resigns amid controversy

International Cooperation and Development Fund Secretary General Loh Ping-cheung (羅平章) has resigned, just prior to today's fifth anniversary of the fund's founding.

The fund is the foreign aid arm of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

While both sides are citing "personal reasons" as the reasons for the resignation, it is thought that Loh's move is the result of a longstanding disagreement between him and the ministry over the evaluation and implementation of aid and development projects.

Foreign Ministry officials have claimed Loh, who had worked for the World Bank for over 30 years before taking up the fund post in 1996, paid too little heed to the political factors involved in Taiwan's foreign aid programs while putting too much emphasis on the need for prior evaluation of foreign aid schemes.

"Loh's resignation has brought to the surface the conflict between the ministry and the fund. Loh's ideas are different from the ministry's, and many of Taiwan's overseas representatives and ambassadors found him difficult to work with and a bit intolerant," said KMT legislator Fan Yang-shang (范揚盛).

Officials said the major purpose of the minstry's foreign aid programs is to "sustain our relations with our diplomatic allies" and one official even criticized Loh's practices in implementing foreign aid schemes as "copied from the textbook."

Loh handed in his resignation on June 19 to Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Hung-mao (田弘茂), who is also chairman of the fund, expressing his desire to leave his post on Aug. 19 "for some personal reasons."

Loh has refused to accept any interviews with the media since his return from the US last Thursday and Tien told reporters last Friday that he would "respect" Loh's "desire" to resign.

Loh and other fund staffers made no comment in response to the rumors concerning the resignation.

"I should keep a low-profile and I am not entitled to answer your questions," Yang Tzu-pao (楊子葆), fund's deputy secretary general, told the Taipei Times.

Yang was allegedly "inserted" into the fund to take up the post as the organization's secretary general, but the former deputy mayor of Hsinchu City denied the allegation.

The immediate cause of Loh's resignation, some media have claimed, was related to the handling of shaky Taiwan-Macedonia ties in early June.

Loh had reportedly proposed to offer Macedonia a so-called "peace fund" to help reconstruct the crisis-torn Balkan state as a last-ditch effort to sustain ties, but foreign ministry spokeswoman Katharine Chang (張小月) immediately denied the proposal, saying the idea was still at a primitive stage and was "purely a product of some people within the fund."

Loh will go on leave this Friday until his resignation is formally approved by the fund's board of directors at a meeting scheduled for July 25, sources said.