Page:Pentagon-Papers-Part-V-B-4-Book-I.djvu/236

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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011


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SECRET

Such financing could involved grace periods in which no interest is paid, interest rates as low as one per cent annually, and amortization periods as long as fifty years.

Even though the security problem is not yet completely solved, capital is flowing into Viet Nam, and this flow may be substantially increased. The joint group, endorses the view that Viet Nam has tremendous potential for economic progress and development.

Plans already underway or in a preliminary stage for agriculture, water works, mining, fishery, forestry, small industries, steel, textiles, and sugar refining could utilize $60 to $70 million annually - a total of $300 to $350 million over a five year period.

B. INTERNAL REQUIREMENTS:

To cover the resource requirements of the special action program, domestic resources must be fully utilized so as to effectively transfer and compensate manpower while increasing domestic production and avoiding disruptive effects on the civilian sector of the economy. The physical resources available, supplemented by external support, are sufficient to sustain the action program. There remains the requirement for an additional supply of local currency to cover the increase in piaster expenditures.

This increase should be met by: 1) tax reform, designed to restrain any increment in consumption per capita, to encourage production, and to more equitably redistribute the sacrifice imposed by military efforts; 2) exchange reform, which aims at absorbing any windfall profit created by some present unrealistic rates of exchange; 3) by a savings and victory bond campaign to provide additional revenues for the government and to provide opportunity to all citizens to participate with the government in its security effort;

SECRET

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