By EFE,
London : Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said the agreement reached Thursday at the G20 summit here would generate the confidence needed for the global recession to “touch bottom” in the second half of the year.
He also announced at a post-summit press conference that Spain would contribute some 4 billion euros ($5.38 billion) of the $750 billion in new money that will be placed at the disposal of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help poor and developing economies.
After the summits in Washington and London, Spain, the world’s eighth-biggest economy, has consolidated its position in the G20 as “a power in international circles”, the premier said.
Regarding the accords adopted Thursday in London, Zapatero emphasised the support for ending the lack of financial transparency and the “impunity” of tax havens.
“Today, the beginning of the end of the tax havens began,” Zapatero said, noting that at the summit, the respective economy and finance ministers devised steps to sanction countries blacklisted for failing to cooperate with efforts against tax evasion.
With this accord, the differences between the French-German bloc and the US bloc regarding the need to adopt new spending programmes that boost the economy receded.
In Zapatero’s judgement, there is general agreement that the stimulus efforts made to date “has no precedent” and that the approved plans are beginning to have an effect in the economic realm.
Spain, Zapatero said, has initiated one of the largest fiscal expansion plans, amounting to more than two percent of gross domestic product.
The unity shown by the G20, he added, contributed to generating confidence and confirming that in the second half of 2009 the recession will bottom out and “the prospect is for recovery”, noting that “touching bottom would certainly be a positive expectation”.
The Spanish prime minister said that the G20 nations likewise committed to stricter oversight and supervision of financial markets to prevent the recurrence of the kind of activities that caused “the most serious economic recession since World War II”.
He also underlined the need of commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the United Nations nearly a decade ago.
“History will judge us, above all, by the willpower we put into the fight against poverty and misery,” he warned.