Manuel attacks double standards

Cape Town - Expressing African anger at the differential treatment of wealthy countries and developing countries by international financing institutions, Trevor Manuel insisted on Friday that what is sauce for the goose ought also to be sauce for the gander.

If America maintains a "deemed" triple A-rating despite running an 11% budget deficit amounting to $1.2 trillion, he said the poorer states should not be penalised for wanting to increase their deficits.

Emphasising however that he was speaking for Africa and not for South Africa, Manuel said: "People find it strange that we cannot have huge deficits in the same way as the wealthy countries, yet we need additional financing to provide even elementary services." He called for equity and change.

Addressing a press conference on the margins of a meeting of a committee of ten African countries' finance ministers and bank governors, Manuel said that when revenue is hard to come by, the IMF insists on a limit of a two percent deficit. Poor countries which exceed this deficit will he said, "be pummelled".

Donald Kaberuka, president of the African Development Bank, echoed his call for equity saying that Iceland and Hungary received international help, and Africa should too. "The crisis affects us," he said. "We are all interrelated."

The findings of the conference, which was set up as a result of the emergency meeting of finance ministers and governors of the African Union held in November in Tunis, will be relayed to the heads of state and government summit of the AU to be held in Addis Ababa on February 1 and 2.

It will then be up to the summiteers to take matters further. But the South African minister made it clear that the AU should not have to rely on South Africa to carry the flag for the continent at meetings of the G20.

- I-Net Bridge