Brown outlines debt relief for world’s poorest
Published: September 25, 2004
Britain plans to spend an extra 100 million pounds a year on debt relief for some of the world’s poorest countries, the Guardian has reported.
The government says the money will go to more than 30 countries to help them repay debts to the World Bank and African Development Bank.
“We intend to lead by example,” Chancellor Gordon Brown will say in a speech on Sunday, the Guardian has reported.
Brown will call on the world’s biggest donors to do the same when he attends the annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) next month.
Brown, who chairs the IMF’s top policy-setting group, will repeat his longstanding call for IMF gold reserves to be revalued to release cash for debt relief.
Under a 1971 agreement, most IMF gold is valued at just $40 an ounce, or one-tenth of current market prices.
The IMF holds 103.4 million ounces of gold, one of the biggest gold stocks in the world, which is valued on its balance sheet at $8.5 billion (4.7 billion pounds).
“We cannot bury the hopes of half of humanity in the lifeless vaults of gold,” Brown will say ahead of the Labour Party’s annual conference, which opens on Sunday.
World Bank President James Wolfensohn said on Friday the U.S. government had discussed with him a plan to cancel poor countries’ debt to global institutions.
According to one estimate by the Jubilee Debt Campaign, a London-based pressure group, poor countries around the world owe more than $200 billion.
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