CAPTION: PM Bainimarama with UN Secretary General at the ECOSOC meet. Photo: MINFO.
The Chair of the G77+China Group, Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has called on the international community to implement measures to address debt restructuring and debt resolution mechanisms.
The head of the Fijian government addressed the Special High Level Meeting of the ECOSOC on External Debt Sustainability and Development this week at the United Nations in New York.
The meeting addressed lessons learnt from debt crises and ongoing work on sovereign debt restructuring and debt resolution mechanisms.
In his address to the meeting, Prime Minister Bainimarama noted that total external debt of developing countries reached US$4.5 trillion over the year 2010-2011. He said that the Group of 77 was seriously concerned by the substantial increase in the financial stability risks of many developed economies. He said the Group called for urgent and coherent solutions to reduce sovereign risk in developed economies to prevent contagion and to mitigate its impact on the international financial system.
Addressing the vulnerabilities of developing countries to external financial shocks, the Prime Minister said, “The international community must realise that no path to growth can be construed or fostered with unsustainable debt overhang. As such, any debt restructuring exercise should have as its core element a determination of real repayment capacity”.
Prime Minister Bainimarama said that the Group of 77 would like to reiterate its support for the setting up of an independent international system of debt arbitration, in which countries facing risks of debt distress can have recourse to a debt standstill. It is envisaged by the Group of 77 that such a system would facilitate debt work-outs with burden-sharing procedures.
Meanwhile the Prime Minister met this week with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the margins of the meeting.
MINFO