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| In an address to a protocolary session of the OAS Permanent Council in Washington D.C. on Tuesday, Prime Minister Golding renewed his plea for a special system to assist middle income countries. (File photo) | |
WASHINGTON DC, October 1, 2008 - Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding has received support from Organisation of American States (OAS) Secretary General José Miguel Insulza in his bid to get donor countries and institutions to recognize the risk of being too quick to graduate middle income developing states from international aid.
In an address to a protocolary session of the OAS Permanent Council in Washington D.C. on Tuesday, Prime Minister Golding renewed his plea for a special system to assist middle income countries.
Golding said the OAS must be more than "a sorting house where we matriculate countries into new exclusive clubs-those that have graduated to the point where they can now be classified as developed countries and we send them on their way."
Insulza acknowledged the OAS had a role to play in reversing this situation.
Speaking after the Jamaican prime minister, Insulza told Golding: "You are absolutely correct that the current system of classification, which deprives countries who have graduated out of less developed country status from receiving financing on favorable terms and accessing other poverty alleviating incentives, is simply serving to drown these countries in crippling debt."
During his address, Golding had lamented the fact that, despite their middle income status, many countries in the Caribbean and the wider Americas lacked the capacity to penetrate markets; adequate human resources, education and training capacity; as well as mechanisms to empower the poor.
Adding his voice to those calling for a change to the status quo in the light of the spill-on effects of the financial meltdown currently occurring in the financial districts of the United States, Golding also emphasized the need for a comprehensive, fundamental reform of the multilateral financial system.
"The multilateral framework has for too long been oblivious to the fact that these changes require changes in the machinery that seeks to guide, if not regulate, the world's financial arrangements," Golding observed.
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