Britain to provide investment insurance.

Ms Margaret Beckett, the President of the Board of Trade in the British government, has announced that the Export Credits Guarantee Department's (ECGD) Overseas Investment Insurance (OII) scheme will be extended to encourage British companies to invest in some of the world's poorest countries.

This is part of the strategy announced in September 1997 by Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the Conference of Commonwealth Finance Ministers (the Mauritius Mandate) to promote sustainable development in the world's poorest and most indebted countries.

The government also aims to use the OII scheme to leverage as much private investment as possible. It will, therefore, be seeking participation from public and private sector insurers as well as from investors themselves.

ECGD's Overseas Investment Insurance scheme is designed to assist British investors in developing countries by providing political risk insurance.

The scheme insures investors against the main political risks of war, expropriation and restrictions on remittances. In Africa this new initiative will immediately apply to Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), C[hat{o}]te d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Republic, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia. ECGD cover is already available for Ghana.