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Currency transaction taxes and responsible financing at the UN

18 April 2008

The Special high-level meeting of the Economic and Social Council with the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development took place on Monday, 14 April 2008, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.  The overall theme of the meeting was "Coherence, coordination and cooperation in the context of the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus, including new challenges and emerging issues".

Civil society organisations were delighted to hear support for a currency transaction tax by the Secretary General in his opening statement to the council.   He described the currency transaction tax as a  "a minuscule tax that is not expected to  materially affect market operations while having the potential to generate billions of dollars that can be allocated for development" and said that this type of tax could be best implemented in a cooperative manner by countries. 

The need for a currency transaction tax was supported by Elena Gerebizza, from CRBM, who as one of the civil society representatives in the afternoon session raised this issue together with a call to address capital flight and tax havens. There was a lot of support for addressing capital flight from the Norwegian delegation, who are currently leading a taskforce on flight of illicit flows from developing countries.

The single round of applause for the day was reserved for Jo-Marie Griesgraber from New Rules for Global Finance, whose rounding intervention on the "pathetic" outcome of the IMF governance reform process.  She eloquently rejected the claims from the Canadian Executive Director to the IMF that the minuscule shift of 2.7% of the vote to developing countries represented real change.  The Canadian ED prefaced his remarks by stating that as a representative for a diverse group of countries, including Canada, Ireland and the Caribbean islands, his views could be seen as being objective!

Climate change and funding for climate adaptation was also on the agenda. It is estimated that between US$28 and US$65 billion extra will be needed to address problems caused by climate change.  There were strong arguments from both panelists and representatives from the floor that these funds must be additional to existing ODA.

Eurodad presented its new Charter on Responsible Financing in the roundtable on Development Cooperation in Middle Income Countries.  This diverse group of countries includes both creditors and debtor countries, and the issue of continuing debt burden being raised by a few of the latter.

The Secretary General has named two special envoys on Financing for Development for Doha.  These are Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, German Development Minister and Trevor Emmanuel South African Minister of Finance

A number of statements made in both the plenary sessions and the roundtables are available on the UN website: http://www.un.org/esa/ffd/ecosoc/springmeetings/2008/index.htm