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Article by Vandana Shiva, Focus on the Global South, Focus on Trade
no. 75, March 2002
Financing for Globalisation - Not Financing for
Development
By Vandana Shiva, 22.
February 2002
On 30th Jan 2002, the
U. N. General Assembly proposed a `Draft
outcome of the International Conference on Financing for Development"
for the Financing for Development Summit to be held in Monterrey,
Mexico, on 21 and 22nd March 2002.
The "Monterrey
Consensus" has the following "leading actions":
-
Mobilizing domestic
financial resources.
-
Mobilizing
international resources for development: foreign direct
investment and other private flaws.
-
International trade as
an engine for development.
-
Increasing
international financial and technical cooperation for
development.
-
External debt
-
Enhancing the coherence
and consistency of the international
monetary, financial and trading systems in support of development.
All the actions point
to acceleration of economic globalisation and
widening of the gaps between rich and poor. It is not about
mobilizing
finances for people's development and sustainable development but
mobilizing public resources for private sector benefits.
The action of "mobilizing domestic financial resources for
development" is not about increasing people's security, and
improving
livelihood and employment opportunity. Instead, mobilizing domestic
resources is viewed as vital for "encouraging the private sector
and
attracting and making effective use of international investment".
To attract foreign
direct investment "countries need to continue their
efforts to achieve a transparent, stable and predictable investment
climate, with proper contract enforcement and respect for property
rights". In other words the Bechtels and Enrons should continue to
have
full opportunities to free investment, even if they bankrupt countries,
their
employees and even themselves. Bechtel should have the right to
sue
Bolivia after people's movements threw it out for privatising the water
of
Cochabamba and attempting to making super profits from selling water.
Enron should have a right to sue India, and claim "compensation"
for
electricity it could not sell from its Dabhol Power Plant because it was
beyond the purchasing power of people and inspite of the project itself
being another example of Enron's corrupt practices. The Monterrey
consensus is about the rights of the Bechtels and Enrons, not the
people of Bolivia or the people of India.
It does not address the crisis of corporate control and corporate
corruption as a major source of hemorrhaging of the wealth of
communities and countries. It does not address how monopolies in
seeds and agricultural trade are impoverishing farmers, pushing the
poor to starvation and draining rural communities of their natural and
economic resources.
In spite of the
evidence that globalisation, trade liberalisation and
structural adjustment programmes have increased poverty and
inequality and deepened underdevelopment, the Draft outcome
reaffirms the commitment to trade liberalisation and states that:
increased trade and foreign direct investment could boost economic
growth and could be a significant source of employment.
The Monterrey consensus is in fact coercively and undemocratically
arrived at Doha consensus. As the declaration states,
to ensure that world trade supports development to the benefit of all
countries, we encourage the members of the World Trade Organisation
to implement the outcome of its Fourth Ministerial Conference, held in
Doha, Qatar, from l9 to 14 Nov, 2001."
Official development assistance too has been made subservient to
corporate globalisation:
ODA can be critical for improving the environment for private sector
activity and can thus pave the way for robust growth.
There are no people in the Monterrey declaration. The calls of
Jubilee
2000 on Debt and the movement for the Tobin Tax have found no
reflection in the Monterrey consensus which focuses on investment and
trade and liberalisation. It is the MAI and Doha in the cloak of
"development". The Monterrey Summit should be called
"Financing for
globalisation" not "financing for development".
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