Ruto: Africa wants fair treatment not favourable conditions
President William Ruto has said Africa needs to be treated fairly when seeking loans in the international space. Ruto said Africa ought to be given fair treatment and not to be given favourable conditions. https://bit.ly/46nsV6y
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00:00 We do not want favorable treatment.
00:02 We want fair treatment.
00:05 If others are paying 2%, let's pay 2%.
00:07 We shouldn't be paying 14%, right?
00:11 I think it's just fair.
00:12 Number two, we are saying for countries
00:15 that are almost in debt distress,
00:18 52 countries, Secretary General of UN said yesterday,
00:21 52 countries representing 3.4 billion people
00:25 are either high risk or moderate risk in debt distress.
00:30 We need to pull back these countries.
00:32 We need a mechanism that pulls back these countries.
00:34 We have suggested that, number one,
00:36 let us do a longer term tenure of their sovereign debts.
00:42 Let us put in there a grace period, five, 10 years.
00:46 This will give them a breather, because it is no longer
00:50 possible to do development without doing climate action.
00:54 Because those are one and the same going forward.
00:57 And finally, is the biggest elephant in the room?
01:03 Two aspects.
01:04 We have said that it is now time for us
01:08 to leverage on the balance sheets
01:10 of the multilateral development banks,
01:13 create additional concessional resources, $500 billion.
01:22 It's possible.
01:23 Let's look at liquidity challenges.
01:24 How do we go for another SDR facility?
01:29 We went for it during COVID.
01:31 Why can't we go for it to deal with debt distress
01:35 and to deal with climate action?
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