I found this article in The Times and was frankly staggered by the figures being presented as the amount of total debt that the countries owe. What I would like to see is how long it will take to pay off these debts. UK Government borrowing averages about £36.4 billion; worth bearing in mind when looking at these figures.
I have no problem with the principle of paying off third world debts (although I question whether the term "third world" is necessarily right in some of these instances.) I am however very much in the camp believes that there needs to be safeguards in place to prevent the accumulation of future debts within these countries and that future loans are spent on the evident need for infrastructure and not on weapons and palaces etc. The question is how do you do thuis without appearing to run their economies for them and becoming part of a new form of economic colonialism?
No comments:
Post a Comment