By IANS,
New Delhi : The global recovery package agreed at the G20 summit must not be used as artificial life support for a dying economic model, warns international NGO ActionAid.
“There is a risk that this $1 trillion breathing space will be used to carry on with business as usual,” Soren Ambrose, ActionAid’s development finance adviser, said in a statement issued Friday, a day after the summit closed in London.
“Instead, developing countries need to be encouraged to introduce new policies to put markets at the service of people instead of the other way around,” he added.
“We need to invest in the human capital and the productive capacity of women and the poor to bring about land reforms, massive investment in smallholder agriculture, universal and free education and health care,” said Anne Jellema, international policy director at ActionAid.
Use of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) reserve assets is an innovative step, which needs to be repeated every year until the recession ends, rather than used on an ad hoc basis, said a spokesman of the NGO.
“This will enable poor countries to access much needed liquidity at very low rates of interest without incurring the complex and often punitive conditions attached to normal IMF loans,” said Ambrose.
“The G20 must ensure that at least half of the Special Drawing Rights (IMF’s own currency) allocated go to developing countries.”