Correa calls for new finance system
Ecuadorean president tells UN summit that IMF and World Bank should be dissolved.
‘New system required’
If the Bretton Woods bodies, which were set up in the aftermath of World War II, cannot be abolished they should at least hold less power over the world’s poor countries, Correa said.
Decisions on how to manage the global economy should instead by transferred to the United Nations, he said.
The three-day UN Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis is being attended by 140 developing nations, with most of them calling for changes to be made to the global economic system.
Scores of countries attending the conference have argued that the global downturn is due to reckless economic liberalisation and de-regulation of financial systems by Western nations.
But not a single representative of a developed country is attending the summit, highlighting the divide between richer and poorer nations on how the global financial system should be managed.
“We are now dealing with the consequences of excluding the majority from the decision-making process, but it is the majority that has to pay the worst consequences and the worst price for the errors made by – I’m sorry to say it – a greedy minority,” Miguel D’Escoto, the president of the UN General Assembly, told Al Jazeera.
Rich nations criticised
Cath Turner, Al Jazeera’s correspondent at the UN, said that the absence of rich nations such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, was of note.
“It is particularly striking because this entire summit is basically a plea to those countries by developing countries,” she said.
“They are asking for more money, and help: ‘you created this economic crisis, now you have to help us out.’
“There is some talk that Western diplomats are not happy with the way that this UN summit has been organised – as a platform for developing nations to attack Western nations.”
Correa’s call for the IMF and World Bank to be scrapped comes a day after Rodrigo Malmierca Diaz, Cuba’s trade minister, said that the bodies had “impoverished” developing nations.
Diplomats have said that the UN conference is set to agree on a draft document outlining changes to the global financial system, including limits on the decision making powers of the IMF.
The final proposals are expected to be a toned-down version of those in an initial draft that was prepared by D’Escoto.
The draft also urges increased aid and debt relief for poor nations and more supervision of high-risk hedge funds and derivatives, while warning against protectionism.