Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-04-25-Speech-4-041"
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"en.20020425.3.4-041"2
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".
Madam President, I would like to thank the Members for their valuable contribution to the development of this report, and I would also like to thank Commissioner Nielson for the opportunity to work on the issue; although he is not in the Chamber today, he was very hospitable towards Mr Tajani and myself precisely with a view to discussing this problem which is holding many countries of our world in a vice.
To sum up, Madam President, I feel that there are a number of initiatives that can help these countries, not least the use of new technologies, as discussed at Palermo just a few weeks ago on the initiative of the Italian Government, the World Bank and the UN: applying new technologies to debt management systems, including national debt management systems, and budget monitoring, which would certainly help public administrations to give us clear, practical indications of the target to be set and deal with the concern which is holding us back, which is these countries’ arms purchases and their failure to transfer benefits and use them to fund the social and economic poverty reduction initiatives and, of course, the social and healthcare projects which, on the other hand, these countries do need.
In order to give fresh impetus to the international consensus regarding debt reduction and to respond to the international community’s growing concerns regarding the increasing marginalisation of the least-developed countries within the world economy, the Commission is now, with this communication, proposing full cancellation of the debts linked to any of the special loans granted to the least-developed ACP countries under the first three Lomé Conventions which are still outstanding following the introduction of debt-relief measures under the HIPC initiative launched in 1996.
This is a brief overview of the situation. The problem of external debt and the ability to service the interest payable on that debt continues to be one of the basic constraints on economic development in the poor countries. These countries – most of which are located in Africa – allocate on average 40% of their annual budgets to debt servicing, which reduces their investment capacity and therefore their ability to offer their people basic social services such as healthcare and education. Paradoxically, the development aid provided by the EU and its Member States to the world's poorest countries is sometimes not even sufficient to cover the cost of servicing their external debt. In addition, the global economic slowdown is deepening as a result of the events of September 11 2001, exacerbating the already severe problems of these communities.
Here are some figures: the debt of the HIPCs increased from USD 147 billion in 1989 to USD 214 billion in 2001; at present, 41 of the world’s poorest countries are in a situation of bankruptcy and 300 out of every 600 HIPC citizens survive on less than a dollar per day. I will spare you the details of the lives of these people, suffering from illnesses such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, of which, moreover, there is currently an upsurge, or of the situation, in particular, of children, people with disabilities or sick people, seeing as there are no elderly people to speak of in these countries.
Twenty-six countries have become eligible for debt relief now, having reached what is known as the decision point, and can now benefit directly from the cut in debt servicing, but to officially exploit this relief, reaching the completion point – which has currently only been reached by four countries, moreover – they must implement a pre-established package of social and structural reforms and maintain sound macroeconomic performance.
It is strange, however, that no deadline has been set for them to reach this completion point, although the average time frame should be at least 15 months in practice. Moreover, such a short time period gives the highly indebted countries little time to develop multisectoral strategies for combating poverty and forces local governments to spend money and funds on reaching the completion point rather than on implementing a sustainable programme and a credible plan for combating poverty.
In general, however, we can say that the enhanced HIPC initiative is still, on its own, wholly inadequate to resolve the issue in the current context of economic globalisation, even though it acknowledges the failure of earlier programmes and initiatives based on macroeconomic strategies, for it does not, in actual fact, decrease the nominal debt of the HIPCs. If the size of the debt is not radically reduced, these countries will be condemned to repaying it forever and ever.
Now, the European Parliament and the Commission, in particular, have firmly upheld the need to cancel this debt, not least in the wake of the Jubilee 2000 campaign in which a range of different political, civil and religious organisations and movements – led by the Holy See – vehemently demanded the complete cancellation of the debt. In particular, I feel that it is important to emphasise the involvement of the Holy Father, who, during the Jubilee year, which was a year of charity, called for greater, more effective focus on the problems of poverty which are still afflicting the world.
As regards Monterrey, although it was criticised as the umpteenth display of mere grand declarations on the part of the wealthy countries, I feel that it should still be seen as a positive development for it led to an increase in practical goals. Evidence of this is, in fact, the Union’s commitment to providing a further USD 20 billion dollars of aid by 2006 and USD 7 billion dollars after 2006."@en1
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