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ECA Press Release No. 08/2003
AFRICAN MINISTERS PRONOUNCE ON AID, TRADE, DEBT, IMF, HIV/AIDS
Addis Ababa, 2 June 2003 (ECA) - Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development ended their annual meeting yesterday with specific proposals aimed at advancing the agenda on issues that are critical to Africa's development.
A summary of key issues raised in the Ministerial Statement issued at the close of yesterday's Conference follows:
On Aid and Development Effectiveness, the Ministers:
Welcomed the accession by 15 African countries to the African peer Review Mechanism envisaged under the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), urged these countries to move forward with peer review, and urged others to sign up;
Welcomed progress on aid quality and ODA commitments, but warned that the level of aid flows to Africa remained a major concern and needed to be further increased;
Welcomed the proposed International Finance Facility (IFF) as "the first of its kind designed to mobilize additional resources for the poorest countries to meet the MDGs";
Urged Africa's partners to ensure that all policies impacting on African development, including those in the areas of ODA, trade, market access, and agriculture, were consistent with the MDGs, and recommended that Africa's partners adopt domestic policy measures that would increase FDI flows to Africa;
On Trade, the Ministers:
Expressed their deep concern on the negative impact of OECD agricultural subsidies on the African agriculture sector, and called for action by OECD countries to front-load the benefits of trade liberalization for the poorest countries by providing immediate duty-free and quota-free market access, removing non-tariff barriers, and developing an appropriate price stabilization mechanism;
Warned that negotiations on the key elements of the Doha Development Round had achieved little, with key deadlines for market access for agricultural products, TRIPS and public health, and special and differential treatment missed; and
Urged Africa's development partners to respond positively to African proposals so as to make the September 2003 Cancun WTO Ministerial Meeting a success
On Debt, the Ministers:
Warned that the enhanced Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative was not delivering long-term debt sustainability and called for the rapid establishment of a legal technical assistance facility to help HIPC deal with creditor litigation;
Recognized that domestic debt in many African countries requires urgent attention because it reduces fiscal flexibility, raises domestic interest rates and crowds out investment; and
Endorsed the Economic Commission for Africa's plan to convene an African Expert Group Meeting on debt relief in September 2003 to be followed by an International Conference on African Debt in early 2004, to
"meet the challenge of defining the policies, instruments and initiatives that can constitute the next step in the international community's efforts to reduce Africa's debt burden".
On the role of the IMF, the Ministers:
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Recommended that the IMF assist African countries in developing a menu of policy options, impose fewer structural conditions, and provide for "floating tranches" or outcomes-based conditions where appropriate;
Urged the Bretton Woods Institutions, bilateral partners and the African Development Bank to avoid cross- conditionalities that impede African access to much-needed resources;
Recommended that to provide greater fiscal flexibility, the IMF should also analyze the linkages, trade-offs and policy choices required to attain the MDGs, as a basis for discussions with development partners on mobilizing the additional resources required for progress towards the MDGs.
Proposed that evaluating exogenous shocks -- commodity price volatility, natural disasters and aid shortfalls -- should be a standard feature of IMF discussions with member states, and that access to concessional lending should be extended to countries suffering from exceptional exogenous shocks such as terrorist attacks and the onslaught of new communicable diseases.
On HIV/AIDS, the Ministers:
Projected that the HIV/AIDS epidemic will cut approximately one per cent from GDP growth rates, significantly diminishing the prospects of realizing the economic expansion necessary to reduce poverty;
Articulated the crucial leadership role of Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development in mobilizing sufficient resources to confront the disease and identifying strategies to mitigate the adverse socio-economic impacts of the epidemic;
Stressed that additional resources were urgently needed to support Africa's efforts in confronting HIV/AIDS;
and
Urged the Bretton Woods Institutions to consider revising the eligibility criteria for assistance to middle income countries afflicted by the AIDS epidemic, and to find ways of ensuring that countries could expand expenditure on health and social welfare without violating conditionalities that impose limits on public spending.
The Conference was organized by ECA on the theme "Towards greater policy coherence and mutual accountability for development effectiveness', and was being held back-to-back with the Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank (ADB), taking place at the United Nations Conference Center in Addis Ababa. The Annual Meetings Symposium, held today and previously a hallmark of the ADB Annual Meetings, was jointly sponsored by the ADB and ECA.
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For the full text of the Ministerial Statement, a well as all other documents related to this year's Conference, please visit www.uneca.org/conferenceofministers . Documents from previous conferences, including Ministerial Statements, are also available at the same site.
For more on the Annual Symposium and the African development Bank Annual meetings, visit www.afdb.org For more on the IFF, visit www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/documents/
For more on the IMF, visit www.imf.org
+++ COMING SOON: THE ECONOMIC REPORT ON AFRICA 2003 +++
Issued by the ECA Communication Team P.O. Box 3001
Addis Ababa Ethiopia
Tel: +251-1-51 58 26 Fax: +251-1-51 03 65
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