Global lending system is unfair, punitive to developing nation – President Ruto berates West at Paris Summit

Agency Report

President William Ruto of Kenyan at a round table deliberation on global economy at the New Global Financial Pact Summit holding at the Palais Brongniart, Paris, France, berated the West for making African countries victims of global crisis, protesting the global lending system of international financial institutions, is “unfair, punitive, and does not give everybody a fair chance”.
President Ruto, speaking on the sidelines of a two-day summit in Paris deliberating on solutions to revamp the international financial order to better help developing nations combat poverty and climate change, protested that the West always see the poor countries as victims, always seeking for help, yet they pay higher interest rates on loan than the rich countries, being profiled as risky. He said that African countries do not want to look for help but want to participate in the solution.

The Kenyan President declared: “Currently, poorer countries have to pay as much as eight times more in interest rates than rich nations “because they are profiled as risky.
“Some people do not want a mechanism where people are equal, they want us to continue this conversation where we are looking for help.
“We are tired of this story” painting Africans as “victims of climate change” who are “looking for favours” and “complaining.
“We do not want to look for help. We want to participate in the solution.”
President Ruto maintained that Kenya is not looking for handouts, and that he wants to attract private investment more than development aid for his country. The kenyan President called for reform of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank; including a rethink of debt management of developing nations and the deployment of international taxes on shipping, aviation and financial transactions.
He decried that Kenya pays $10 billion a year to service its debt; stating: “If we use it instead for development of the country, it will be immediate, it will be big resources and it will have huge impact.”
Ruto maintained: “We must set aside all these other issues and deal with climate change together.”
He insisted that it is not only up rich nations to pay the world’s climate bill but all nations.
According to the Kenyan President, “we want to pay, all of us.
“As we continue the tension and the finger pointing, the world is burning.
“We want to repair by avoiding the blame game.”
President Ruto stated further: “We don’t want to say ‘the North is the one which brought about this problem, They are the emitters’. That is also true, but we don’t want to go there. Today, we are all in shit.”
Several world leaders assembled at the New Global Financial Pact Summit holding at the Palais Brongniart, Paris, France, on June 22 to deliberate on international economic reforms to help debt-burdened developing countries find solutions to increasing problems of poverty, climate change and development.
Ruto, canvassing that if the debt owed to international lenders, including the World Bank and IMF, are converted into a 50-year loan facility with a 20-year grace period, declared: “this way, Kenya would “not run away” from its debt, which would have “just been rescheduled.”