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Bloomberg''s weekly survey predicts down week for gold but Turk disagrees
G7 Fails to Reach Deal on Debt Relief
By Sumeet Desai
Reuters
Saturday, April 16, 2005
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?
type=businessNews&storyID=8201613
WASHINGTON -- The Group of Seven economic powers on Saturday failed
once again to agree on how to free Africa from debt and poverty.
Aid agencies had wanted the rich countries to make good on their
pledge to help rid the world's poorest countries of their crippling
debt but ministers once again could not decide on the best way to pay
for this.
Their final statement after a Saturday meeting went no further than
thanking the International Monetary Fund for a study on how its gold
reserves could be used to help fund 100 percent debt relief and
promising more discussion.
"There was complete silence from the G7 on the sale of IMF gold. Yet
the IMF has clearly said the gold can be sold to help cancel poor
countries' debt," said Jonathan Hepburn, policy adviser for Oxfam
International.
"How many children have to die before these seven men in suits
develop a sense of urgency?"
In a report prepared for the G7 meeting in Washington, the IMF said
an overall sale of about 13 to 16 million ounces of its 103.4 million
ounces of bullion could be handled by the market without significant
difficulty.
Britain, the current holder of the G7 presidency, has declared 2005 a
make-or-break year for Africa and says there is no chance of meeting
a United Nations goal of halving world poverty by 2015 without
stumping up money now.
Its finance minister Gordon Brown broke off from election campaigning
at home to press his G7 colleagues to back his gold sales plan.
But the United States is opposed.
Snow told the IMF policy committee on Saturday selling gold stocks to
pay for debt relief was the wrong approach.
"So whatever the merit of the argument might be, it's not going to
pass," Canadian Finance Minister Ralph Goodale told Reuters in an
interview on Friday.
Nor does President Bush's administration back Brown's other idea --
an International Finance Facility (IFF) that would double cash for
developing countries by issuing bonds against rich countries' future
aid budgets.
The G7 statement simply said ministers had discussed a pilot of the
scheme currently being run to raise money for immunization of African
children.
France's proposal to levy a small tax on airline tickets, say around
one euro or one dollar per ticket, to pay for aid, also failed to win
support.
Ahead of the meeting, British Treasury officials played down hopes of
a deal but are conscious time is running out before G8 leaders'
summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, in July.
"The politicians are cutting it very fine. 2005 has the potential to
be a breakthrough year and for nothing to have happened yet smacks of
dangerous brinkmanship," said Anna Taylor of Save the Children.
"If all we get from the G8 is piecemeal debt packages and
reannouncement of existing aid commitments, the world can be
rightfully angry at the failure of its leaders to make child poverty
history."
* * *
Britain's Brown Denies
IMF Gold Plan 'Disappeared'
From Reuters
Saturday, April 16, 2005
http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?
type=bondsNews&storyID=8201937
WASHINGTON -- British finance minister Gordon Brown on Saturday
denied that his proposal to fund debt relief through IMF gold sales
had been taken off the table.
"I don't think it is at all true to say it has disappeared," Brown
told a news conference after a meeting of global finance ministers in
the International Monetary Fund's main policy-setting committee in
Washington.
The United States opposes using gold sales to reduce debt.
An earlier statement from Group of Seven finance chiefs issued after
their Saturday morning meeting said nothing about Brown's proposal.
It merely thanked the fund for a study on how its gold reserves could
be used to help fund 100 percent debt relief and promised more
discussion.
But Brown said G7 finance ministers had agreed that more aid was
needed to help poor countries. "Everyone accepted there must be more
money for debt relief," he said.
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