{"id":5864,"date":"2023-06-23T18:33:21","date_gmt":"2023-06-23T13:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/?p=5864"},"modified":"2023-06-23T18:34:53","modified_gmt":"2023-06-23T13:34:53","slug":"kenyan-president-slams-unfair-global-lending-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/world\/kenyan-president-slams-unfair-global-lending-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenyan president slams ‘unfair’ global lending system"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paris, June 23: Kenyan President William Ruto does not hold back when describing the global lending system: it is “unfair, it’s punitive, it doesn’t give everybody a fair chance”.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruto made his blunt assessment in an interview with AFP on the sidelines of a two-day summit in Paris seeking to revamp the international financial order to better help developing nations combat poverty and climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently, poorer countries have to pay as much as eight times more in interest rates than rich nations “because they are profiled as risky”, Ruto said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Kenyan leader said his country is not looking for handouts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Some people do not want a mechanism where people are equal, they want us to continue this conversation where we are looking for help,” Ruto said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We are tired of this story” painting Africans as “victims of climate change” who are “looking for favours” and “complaining”, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We do not want to look for help. We want to participate in the solution,” Ruto said late Thursday, on the eve of the summit’s final day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He wants to attract private investment more than development aid for his eastern African nation, but he is also calling for reform of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also backs a rethink of debt management of developing nations and the deployment of international taxes on shipping, aviation and financial transactions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kenya pays $10 billion a year to service its debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“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 said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said this could be achieved if the debt owed to international lenders, including the World Bank and IMF, were converted into a 50-year loan facility with a 20-year grace period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This way, Kenya would “not run away” from its debt, which would have “just been rescheduled.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

French President Emmanuel Macron told the summit, which ends Friday, that the global financial system needs a jolt as “countries shouldn’t ever have to choose between reducing poverty and protecting the planet”.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paris, June 23: Kenyan President William Ruto does not hold back when describing the global lending system: it is “unfair, it’s punitive, it doesn’t give everybody a fair chance”. Ruto made his blunt assessment in an interview with AFP on the sidelines of a two-day summit in Paris seeking to revamp the international financial order […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":5866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[396,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5864"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}