Britain is planning a new effort to help poor countries reduce their huge debts by offering to pay off 10 percent of the total owed to international agencies and challenging other nations to follow suit, said Chancellor of the Exchequer Gor-don Brown.
In an address scheduled for yesterday to an advocacy group called the Trade Justice Movement, Brown planned to repeat a proposal that the IMF should revalue its vast gold reserves, currently priced at a tenth of their market value, and use the proceeds to cancel some Third World debt, according to the a text of his remarks published on Saturday in The Guardian and later confirmed by the Treasury.
The issue is rising once more on the international agenda because a previous mechanism for debt relief, set up in 1996 by the World Bank and the IMF, is to be renewed in December for two years. James Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank, said on Friday in Washington that the White House had devised a plan to cancel some Third World debt, Reuters reported. Senator John Kerry has also pro-mised to lead efforts to cancel the debts of impoverished countries if he is elected in November.
Brown's proposal is significant because it comes just days before the annual meetings of the World Bank and the IMF in Washington. The finance ministers of the G7 major industrial nations, including Brown, are also to meet just before those gatherings.
"What we hope is that this will break the logjam that has been there for some time," said Brendan Cox, a spokesman for Oxfam, a nonprofit group that has urged accelerated moves to cancel Third World debt.
"If others follow suit it will be a massive turning point in efforts to end the burden of international debt," Cox said.
Brown was scheduled to tell the meeting of anti-debt campaigners yesterday that Britain will set aside the equivalent of US$180 million a year to pay off 10 percent of the money owed by 32 countries to international lenders, notably the World Bank and the African Development Bank.
"Because the poor cannot wait, we intend to lead by example by paying our share of their payments to the World Bank and the African Development Bank," Brown was planning to say. "We do this alone today, but we urge you to use your moral authority to urge other countries to follow suit so that poor countries can look forward to a future free from the shackles of debt."
Brown will also argue that the debt owed to the IMF could be cut by a revaluation of the fund's gold stocks, currently worth US$8.5 billion when valued at US$40 per ounce. The market price for gold is now more than US$400 an ounce.
"Because we cannot bury the hopes of half of humanity in the lifeless vaults of gold, the cancellation of debt owed to the IMF should be paid for by the better use of IMF gold," Brown planned to say.
Some estimates put the total debt owed by the poorest countries at around US$200 billion.
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS