The British Finance Minister Gordon Brown has declared that the creation of a “Marshall Plan for Africa” is at the heart of the Blair governments agenda for its presidency of the Group of Eight in 2005, seeking to step up significantly the level of development aid for the third world, reports the World Bank press review Thursday.
As he prepares to travel to the US and three African states over the next few weeks to underpin the UKs commitment to debt relief for the region, the chancellor called Wednesday for “a new deal” on global development that “demands a new accountability from both rich and poor countries”.
In a speech to the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development that spelt out both a political and moral case on increased debt relief, Brown reiterated a range of goals set out by the UK on African aid. He said his Government was committed to getting 100 percent debt relief for the poorest African states and getting other countries to match the UKs goal of spending 0,7 percent of gross domestic product on development aid.
Britain would also seek to raise an additional 50 billion pound a year for the International Finance Facility (IFF) which frontloads debt relief to Africa. But Brown argued that, in 2005, the richest countries must “break new ground” in this area, matching 100 percent bilateral debt relief with 100 percent multilateral debt relief; and ensuring that the cancellation of debts owed to the IMF should be financed by using IMF gold.
Th IFF would double aid to 100 billion US dollar (550 milliarder DKR) a year by issuing bonds in the capital markets using donor countries long- term funding commitments as collateral — effectively securitizing their aid budgets.
Washington has yet to endorse the IFF but Italy became the second G8 country last week to back the plan which Brown says is needed if Millennium Development Goals of halving world poverty and reducing infant mortality by two-thirds are to met by 2015.
The British Finance Minister said he had the support of the EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, and the whole European Commission, in his aim to abolish unfair export subsidies that have skewed global markets in favor of Western products.
– Both Mandelson and the European Commission now recognize that the old policy on agriculture, which was protectionist, which put Europe at odds with the rest of the world, where we spent half the communitys budget on subsidizing inefficiency in farms, is not the way forward and that is why there is an agreement to abolish export subsidies,” he told BBC radio.
Brown also wants the richest countries to buy vast stocks of AIDS and malaria vaccines as soon as they become available, to encourage drugs companies to spend more on research and development.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
