BRUSSELS: The European Union yesterday approved 31.5 billion euros in development funds in 2014-2020 for struggling nations in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, while welcoming Somalia’s request to join the ACP as it inches back into the international fold.

Approval of the Somali bid by ministers from the EU and ACP states “will be crucial in helping Somalia on the road to growth,” said EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

Closing EU-ACP ministerial talks, Botswana Foreign Minister Phandu Skelemani welcomed the aid commitment but cautioned that “we must ask ourselves whether we have the ability to use these funds. It’s one thing to have the money, the other to know how to use it.”

For the first time, much of the development aid — up from the previous package worth 22.7 billion euros — will be spent on poverty eradication, rather than on poverty alleviation, EU Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said.

Scattered from the Caribbean to the Pacific, 39 of the world’s 49 least-developed countries (LDCs) are ACP nations, most of them in Africa.

Together the EU and ACP account for 1.35 billion people and for a large slice of world trade. Differences with African states over trade were aired at the talks, EU diplomats told AFP.