As finance ministers from the world's richest countries gathered in London on Friday, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown said he believed they could make progress toward "the biggest debt settlement the world has ever seen," a plan to erase billions of dollars owed by the world's poorest countries to international lenders.
But other participants at the gathering adopted a more muted view, hinting that some nations may still need to be won over before endorsing the landmark formula for debt relief that the US and UK agreed on this week. In Washington, the White House officially announced the agreement on Friday.
Treasury Secretary John Snow of the US and Brown are among the finance chiefs from the Group of Eight industrialized nations meeting for two days in London in advance of next month's Group of Eight summit meeting in Scotland.
"Much is still to be done, but I think there is a will to do this," Brown said Friday in a radio interview, referring to the plan to free 18 nations, most of them in Africa, from obligations to repay an estimated US$16.7 billion in debt to foreign lenders.
As this year's head of the Group of Eight, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has put the effort to relieve Africa's poverty and ease its debt burden at the head of an agenda that includes curbing global warming.
A breakthrough on the debt issue would enhance his position as he prepares for what is likely to be a contentious summit meeting at a time of deepening strains between the UK and its EU partners.
But it was not clear whether all Group of Eight members accepted the debt-relief plan. Besides the US and UK, the members are France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia.
Arriving in London, for instance, Caio Koch-Weser, Germany's deputy finance minister, said: "I can only say we are working on it."
Romilly Greenhill, a policy specialist with ActionAid International, an advocacy group based in South Africa, said the agreement had not yet won universal approval.
"France, Germany and to a lesser extent Japan are holding back," Greenhill said, because of concerns about the cost of compensating the lenders for the assets they would have to write off. Initially, she said, those countries had favored extending more limited debt relief to only the five poorest countries.
"It's by no means 100 percent certain" that the talks here will produce an agreement, she said. Additionally, the Group of Eight may wish to wait until it meets to announce an agreement with greater fanfare, she said.
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
Nintendo Co hopes to match the runaway success of the Switch when its leveled-up new console hits shelves on Thursday, with strong early sales expected despite the gadget’s high price. Featuring a bigger screen and more processing power, the Switch 2 is an upgrade to its predecessor, which has sold 152 million units since launching in 2017 — making it the third-best-selling video game console of all time. However, despite buzz among fans and robust demand for pre-orders, headwinds for Nintendo include uncertainty over US trade tariffs and whether enough people are willing to shell out. The Switch 2 “is priced relatively high”
RSS