unitex@rubbs.fidonet.org (unitex) (09/03/89)
AFRICAN OFFICIALS SAY DEBT CONFERENCE URGENT
(Reuter Library Report, August 30, 580 words, DATELINE: CAIRO)
African officials, seeking substantial aid to revive ailing economies,
renewed calls on Wednesday for an international conference on the
continent's debt crisis.
They made their appeal at the end of a three-day international seminar
on Africa's 240 billion dollar foreign debt, attended by some 200 African
and other delegates.
"Africa should not relent until the international conference is
convened and a lasting solution is found to the debt problem," said a
statement after the talks arranged by the Organisation of African Unity
(OAU).
Creditors have been cool to the four-year-old proposal, preferring a
case-by-case approach to avoid setting a precedent for collective
bargaining which heavily indebted Latin American states might try to
exploit.
The need for an international conference had become more urgent, said
the statement, adding that substantial additional resources were needed to
help Africa's economies recover.
"Any meaningful proposal for a lasting solution to the debt crisis has
to be based on the principle of reduction of the stock of debt and
service...and increase in new external financial resources in adequate
amounts and of a concessional nature," it declared.
But it indicated more work was needed to lay the groundwork for any
conference. This, it said, would need thorough preparation including "the
identification of strong negotiating cards".
Central bank, treasury, foreign affairs and other officials from 31
African countries attended the talks along with delegates from about 30
other countries and organisations like the International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank.
According to the World Bank, Africa will need more than 15 billion
dollars a year in aid during the 1990s to revive its economies.
"This could come in the form of debt relief or new money," the Bank's
Vice President for Africa Edward Jaycox told Reuters.
"This is a concessional money requirement, basically -- the total ODA
(Overseas Development Assistance) bill that would be required," he said in
an interview on Tuesday night.
World Bank estimates pointed to aid needs for the world's poorest
continent rising from 15 billion dollars in 1990 to 22 billion in the year
2000, he said.
"There are pressures not only from us but other interested parties to
see what can be done to increase the effectiveness of the payout from
Toronto terms (and) extension of those to other income groups."
African officials have called the Toronto package, endorsed by
Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the United States and West Germany,
inadequate.
"The actual debt relief hitherto announced involves only a meagre sum
of 500 million dollars over a ten year period," U.N. Economic Commission
for Africa executive secretary, Adebayo Adedeji, told the seminar.
Jaycox noted 12 African countries had benefited from the Toronto deal
by mid-1989. He said the relief may be relatively small in the next few
years but potential savings could become much larger.
The World Bank estimated that if the package was applied to the year
2000 for all 22 poor countries for which donors set up a special programme
of assistance in 1977, their stock of bilateral, official,
non-concessional debt would be reduced by seven per cent.
"The additional saving in debt service for the 22 countries combined
would average only about 100 million dollars a year in the early 1990s,
but would rise to some 400 million dollars a year early in the next
century," he declared.
* Origin: UNITEX --> Toward a United Species (1:107/501)
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