Africa Calls For Strengthening Of Private Initiatives For Continental Development
New York, Jul 26 2005 6:00PM
Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Advisory Panel on ways to assist the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)
recommended significantly increasing international support for the initiative and unleashing the continent's tremendous
development potential by harnessing the creativity and dynamism of its private sector.
Strengthening the private sector, in its widest sense, depends on educating an efficient, supportive and capable public
sector and improving economic and political governance, areas which require policy action by the African countries, the
13-member Panel's report says.
The private sector, the role of which is stressed in the report, must be assisted through such measures as providing
credit, establishing clear property rights and providing technical assistance, wherever necessary, the Panel says. The
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank should put greater emphasis on the private sector's role within the
framework of national poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs), it adds.
It cautions that reducing trade barriers must be carefully planned and the structure of African trade kept in view. "For
instance, a reduction of agricultural subsidies in the European Union and the United States of America could harm, not
help, the many African nations that are net importers, rather than exporters, of agricultural goods," the report says.
The reduction of African trade barriers could enable the African nations to benefit from trade between developing
countries, it adds.
While the number of bilateral and subregional preferential trade agreements are increasing in Africa, the Panel says the
completion of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations is an important
priority for African nations and it urges NEPAD to show "fulsome support" for it.
In this regard, to facilitate the completion of the Doha Round, the Panel says NEPAD can make a strong case for both
compensatory and short-term, adjustment-oriented aid flows to those African countries seriously affected by the reduced
value of their products as they gradually lose their most favoured nation (MFN) status.
On aid, it says: "The Panel fully endorses the call for a substantial increase in aid levels (net of debt relief and
humanitarian assistance), in accordance with the commitments made by the Group of Eight (G8) major industrialized
countries in Monterrey, Mexico, and the pledge to channel at least one-half of this increase to sub-Saharan Africa."
ENDS