CLEVELAND (CNS): Decisions reached during April meetings of the Group of 20 nations, or G20, the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund to ease the debt burden of the world’s poorest nations were welcomed by Eric LeCompte, the executive director of Jubilee USA.
LeCompte said the propsed measure will help poor countries respond to the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. “We’ve made some real progress,” said LeCompte, who heads the alliance of faith-based development and debt relief advocacy organisations and has long advocated for financial reforms affecting the world’s 73 poorest nations and dozens of other middle-income countries.
“The steps will allow countries to respond to the pandemic and other needs,” he said on April 15. “At the same time, with how serious the crisis is, we recognise we need to do a lot more and in some ways move quickly.”
Atop Jubliee USA’s priority list was the creation of US$650 billion ($5 trillion) in emergency reserve funds, known as Special Drawing Rights (SDR). He described the size of the fund package as the “biggest ever mobilization of such reserves.”
It includes more than US$200 billion ($1.5 billion) for developing countries, with about 10 per cent of the funds being available to the poorest nations. LeCompte said his organisation is working the with the IMF on a process to transfer an additional $400 billion ($3.1 billion) to developing countries, which have seen some of the most serious economic consequences from the spread of Covid-19.
The IMF also cancelled debt service payments for the poorest countries into October.
‘If we are to come out of this situation as a better, more humane and solidary world, new and creative forms of social, political and economic participation must be devised, sensitive to the voice of the poor and committed to including them in the building of our common future’
Pope Francis
LeCompte said the meetings saw the United States (US) and the IMF support a minimum corporate tax and digital taxes that will help developing countries raise significant revenues for their pandemic response.
Pope Francis also urged action on behalf of poor and developing countries in a message to the World Bank Group and IMF as they met.
Despite “our deeply held convictions that all men and women are created equal, many of our brothers and sisters in the human family, especially those at the margins of society, are effectively excluded from the financial world,” the pope said.
“If we are to come out of this situation as a better, more humane and solidary world, new and creative forms of social, political and economic participation must be devised, sensitive to the voice of the poor and committed to including them in the building of our common future,” he said.
LeCompte echoed similar concerns, saying that he and others are troubled that “a few wealthy countries are going to have recovery” while “the majority of the world is not going to be having recovery.”
He said, “For us, over the next year, our work with the US bishops and the development community, it’s going to be imperative we get solutions to all countries of the world, especially the developing middle-income countries that are experiencing the crisis.”
LeCompte also called for more equitable distribution of vaccines worldwide through focused and expanded humanitarian aid. “Unless we act quickly, much of the developing world will not see vaccines until 2023,” he said.
