7-05-05, 11:28 am
On 12 June Gordon Brown announced that he had persuaded the G8 leaders to cancel £32 billion of debt for twenty seven of the world’s poorest nations.
Good news? The government says it will mean that by 2007 these countries will be saved £1.2 billion debt repayments a year – money that can be used for health and education.
BUT what does it say in the small print?
To qualify each nation has to meet the terms laid down by the World Bank's Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative. Gordon Brown's statement said simply 'good governance and tackling corruption'. The Finance Ministers' Statement said these countries must: 'boost private sector development and attract investment' and ensure 'the elimination of impediments to private investment both domestic and foreign'.
Privatisation
These terms mean opening their economies fully to external control and allowing the privatisation of precious resources like water, power and social services. That's why the deal was welcomed by the President of the World Bank, Bush nominee and arch-conservative, Paul Wolfowitz as creating a 'better environment for private sector companies to invest.'
The value of the debt write off only comes to £44 million a year on average for each of the 27 countries. The UK defence budget is £40 billion and the American £300 billion. Each year British firms alone draw £1 billion profit out of Africa.
So, in return for a paltry £44m each, these countries are being forced to surrender economic sovereignty to the giant US and European monopolies and adopt privatisation programmes that have proved disastrous elsewhere. Some deal!
How can we help people in poor countries overcome poverty?
• Make their governments end subsidies to big business that discriminate against Third World agricultural products: EU subsidies to sugar and tobacco; US subsidies to cotton
• Make their governments end World Trade Organisation policies that tie access to markets to the privatisation of services and the opening of economies to outside big business control – like the EU's Services Directive.
• Stop their governments using military force overseas to prevent people taking control of their own economies.
• End the US and EU trade boycotts of countries such as Cuba and China that are attempting to assert their own economic and political independence
Communists argue that we must start in our own county – by forcing our government to change policies and thereby roll back the power of big business that exploits us all.
--Excerpted from Communist Party of Britain
