Thank you very much, Mr. President of the General Assembly. Firstly, let me first salute you for the wisdom of having this session on sustainability this week.
The truth is that there is really no more pressing topic for the majority of the world’s population to have our country settle. On this particular issue, the issue of debt is the one that gives us the greatest stress. The IMF in its World Economic Outlook in its preview last week suggested to us that yet again global growth rates will decline.
At the very time when the countries on debt row need, in fact, more growth and more financing, they are likely to face a situation where the prospects for growth will even be slimmer. At the very time when the geopolitical instability of the world needs us to be able to find a way to lift people out of poverty, middle-income countries are being put at risk of pauperization. And for what? We’ve heard others speak this afternoon very clearly from the Secretary General right back through to all who have spoken about the simple need of what is required for us to make the world a better place and to make it intolerant of poverty and intolerant of disease and intolerant of inequity.
And what is that? One, that we need to come to terms with the fact that every dollar of debt is not the same and that we need to have a different arrangement with respect to how we view debt. Short-term debt of 15 years cannot build hospitals, cannot build schools, but we perpetuate with the nonsense such that invariably countries and continents, as in the case of Africa, 751 million people live in countries that spend more on debt than spend on education and health care. If we do not educate these children, if we do not sustain their lives, how will they grow up to repay the debt which is being incurred in their name? And the reality is that we know better, but we continue to do otherwise.
Similarly, we have to be able to determine how we can, as a matter of fundamental principle, recognize that if there is to be no division between people and planet, then we must have longer maturities, then we must have more affordable interest rates for countries, then we must have more financing to be able to build infrastructure and to invest in our people, and we must finally have faster, sustainable, inclusive growth. The failure to put that at the center of global economic activity and indeed the values that inform our behavior to create the environment for global economic activity is what is at risk here. To have surcharges at the International Monetary Fund continue at a time of high interest rates is unconscionable, because the very countries that need the most room to be able to rebuild their countries are now being asked to pay higher interest rates effectively, and then surcharges on top of it, crowding out the space that it has to be able to buy equipment or to build critical infrastructure.
This is no different from the concept that the World Bank has now put, having accepted the laudable nature of debt pause clauses, to ask a country to pay a premium at the very time when it has been hit by a natural disaster is equally unconscionable. And therefore, these simple things ought not to be the subject of bureaucratic determinations and decisions, but ought to be the subject of a political compact that sees people, hears people and feels people. At the same time, I think we have heard and seen enough over the last few years to know that the common framework is not working, and that the notion that countries will be jealous of each other as to the terms as to what they can sustain and not sustain while countries like Zambia wait, wait and wait, is regrettable and unfortunate and ought not to be applied to other countries in need of urgent assistance as they sit on debt row.
My friends, the common framework needs radical overhaul, and we have in our past the success of the HIPC movement that saw us put arrangements in place to be able to move countries out of poverty. If there is a need to be able to write off debt for those at the very bottom, let us do so. But there is also a need to recognize that middle-income countries are at risk of pauperization if we do not change how we relate to the issue of debt and the orthodoxy that we foist on them.
The reality is there is no magic to a debt-to-GDP 60% ratio, but yet we foist it on countries in the context of an IMF program or in the context of credit rating agencies determining whether debt is sustainable for countries, irrespective of the fact that there may be no investment to be able to allow those countries to withstand the ravages of the climate crisis and to build resilience so that less people die and more livelihoods are saved when they are in fact hit by a climate crisis that they did not contribute to, or a pandemic that they did not contribute to. And at the same time, we do not find the dedicated financing necessary for global public goods that will affect all of us if we do not settle how we treat to the climate crisis, how we treat to preparing for future pandemics, how we avoid the digital divide that has left so many children without access to education, how we deal with the consequences of fragility and conflict which, regrettably, are showing their heads over too many regions across the world. Well, we need to simply stop and reflect on the values that are informing the decisions at the political level and on the precepts and the orthodoxy that has informed development in the current world in which we live.
And if we don’t do so, then we are admitting that we are tolerant of more collateral damage in lives being lost and livelihoods being compromised. I pray and hope that the simple things that are within our control will result in decisions. Just as the IMF has found it possible to bring another African country to the table of its board, we believe that the vulnerable voices of the 20 countries of the world ought to have a seat at the table in its own right.
Because if you do not hear how policies affect us, you cannot affect the changes that are necessary to make a difference in the lives of small island states or middle income countries or vulnerable developing countries. Similarly, if we do not learn from the lessons of the past and apply them fairly and equitably, we will see the inequity continue and the consolidation of wealth in the hands of a very, very, very, very few. This world recognized that it was necessary for the United Kingdom to take 100 years to repay its World War I debt so that it could borrow to build out the rest of Britain after the reality of two wars.
This world allowed Germany the opportunity to cap its debt service in order to be able to rebuild itself after World War II. How do we not afford the same benefits to a Dominica that lost 226% overnight as a result of Hurricane Maria? How do we not have the same principle when countries in Africa continue to be hit in the season of superlatives from drought to floods to the most awful circumstances related also to public health crises? Man-made values can change and political decisions can bring about that change. I hope, Mr. President and Secretary General, that your focus this week on sustainability, your focus later this year on the Summit for the Future, the reality of what has happened in the world over the last few years will bring us to a level of understanding that the power imbalance is choking us.
The Bible speaks of being unequally yoked and that we should not aspire to being in that position. But the reality is that the financial system has become a means to suppressing the capacity of countries being able to provide for their people. Finance was never intended to be an end in and of itself.
It works only for the very, very few ultra-rich. Finance is intended to be a means to an end, to lift people out of poverty, to build prosperity, to have inclusive growth, to make the world a better place. And I pray that this continued discussion and focus will allow us to see change at a more rapid rate than we have seen them.
We give thanks for the natural disaster clauses, but not for the premia or fees that must be attached to them. We give thanks to the Resilience and Sustainability Trust that the IMF put in place for 20-year money, but we now need to see 30-, 40- and 50-year money put at the foot of countries so that those who benefit from the investment can help repay the investment. We need to be able to see the removal of surcharges and we need to be able to see a different approach to all of the matters pertaining to debt and financing if we are to give ordinary people a chance of the best life that they can live on this planet.
There is nothing to be gained by separating people and planet. And there is nothing to be gained by the fact that we may have trillionaires but hundreds of millions of people in poverty. Let us summon the will to be able to change the fundamental orthodoxy that has attached itself to how debt should be treated in the 20th century brought into the 21st century.
And let us show that when we come together to discuss these issues, we can change the precepts and the underlying orthodoxy that can see people, hear people, and feel people. We can bring back down debt overnight, but we cannot rebuild countries that have been ravaged by war or crime or social implosion in under a generation. I thank you.
