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Commonwealth Secretariat press release

Commonwealth welcomes poverty reduction commitment by Britain and France

1 March 2006

Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon has welcomed a decision by the United Kingdom and France to raise billions of dollars for health and education in developing countries by floating bonds on the world's financial markets.

"This is a bold and major step forward in raising the resources required to meet the Millennium Development Goals," he said.

The Secretary-General was commenting on the decision by the two countries during an international conference in Paris on 1 March 2006. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, along with dozens of government ministers and envoys from 95 countries, attended the meeting to examine innovative development financing mechanisms.

The UK and France agreed to establish a Working Party to take forward their decisions.

"The Working Party has a deadline to report at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Singapore in September this year," said Mr McKinnon. "They will receive any backing we can provide to meet their deadlines because the Commonwealth wants to see early implementation of the proposal to float bonds.

"Gordon Brown has worked with vision and persistence to advance his proposal for the International Finance Facility (IFF). I congratulate him for the advance he has secured in the last 24 hours."

The IFF has been proposed by the UK Treasury and Department for International Development and is designed to raise money to help meet Millennium Development Goals. Mr McKinnon said pressure must be maintained on developed countries to honour their commitments to increase aid and offer debt relief made last year at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles and at the Millennium +5 Summit in New York in September.

"There is too much evidence already of key global players losing commitment, passion and motivation to help poor countries in the way they pledged. Some major countries appear to be slipping back on their commitment to fund fully the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative - the proposal to cancel the debt of Highly Indebted Poor Countries. We cannot afford to backtrack on agreements in this area. The world's spotlight needs to remain firmly trained on Third World debt and the commitments made by developed countries to tackle it," the Secretary-General concluded.

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