The European Commission on Tuesday agreed to provide 13 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACP) with a total of 230 million euros (US$334 million) to offset the impact of the financial crisis.

"Developing countries were hit hard by the crisis due to their poor resilience to external shocks," Karel De Gucht, Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, said. "This has left funding gaps in many ACP governments' budgets."

The grant includes 215 million euros (US$312 million) from a 500-million-euro (US$726-million) fund under a so-called Vulnerability Flex mechanism (V-Flex), which was adopted in August 2009 as a response to the economic crisis for ACP countries.

"The Vulnerability Flex mechanism is the European Union's swift response to help countries maintain priority spending, thereby assisting the worst-affected countries to reduce the social costs of this crisis," said the Commissioner.

The V-Flex targets countries highly vulnerable economically, socially and politically. It helps the countries to make the right decision to fight the crisis and improves their finance capacity to fill the budget gap, De Gucht added.

(Xinhua News Agency December 16, 2009)