Interim Committee press conference: Brown, Camdessus hail cooperative agreement on speedy implementation of debt initiative

• Pages: 315

Page 315

Brown: I would like to take you through both the joint meeting of the Interim and Development Committees this morning and the Interim Committee meeting that has just finished. I believe that the joint committee meeting we had symbolized the cooperation and commitment of all countries and institutions to the enhanced debt-relief initiative, which will provide faster, deeper, and broader debt relief, with the central goal of reducing poverty in the world's poorest countries.

As noted in our communiqué [see page 317], we discussed global economic and financial conditions, and we welcomed the marked improvement since the beginning of the year. Among the major industrial countries, a sustained pickup in Europe and Japan will help to achieve a more balanced pattern of growth. We emphasized the importance of open and competitive markets as a key component of efforts to sustain growth and stability in the global economy. We believe the launch of the new trade negotiations in Seattle later this year is an opportunity to make further progress in this direction. Indeed, we encouraged the IMF to work with the World Bank and the World Trade Organization to strengthen the programs of work to achieve better global policymaking.

We have adopted, as part of our reforms of the international financial architecture, the new Code on Monetary and Financial Policies, and we are urging all members to implement this code as well as the previously agreed code on fiscal transparency. We have discussed the efforts to involve the private sector in crisis resolution and we welcomed the progress achieved in securing the involvement of the private sector in individual cases; we are going to continue to do further work to see if agreed principles can be found. As part of the changes in the financial architecture, the Interim Committee has been put on a permanent basis and will now be called the International Monetary and Financial Committee.

The joint meeting this morning made progress in three very important areas: first, moving forward on the reforms to deliver faster, deeper, and wider debt relief; second, strengthening the focus on poverty reduction; and third, making progress in the financing arrangements that will allow the enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative to start after these Annual Meetings without having to wait months or years.

I am grateful, as was the whole committee, for the work of Michel Camdessus and James Wolfensohn in...