This report gives a brief account on the G8 commitments and progress made since last summit in terms of debt, aid and poverty reduction according to G8 summit held in St Petersburg 15-17th July 2006. It also introduces the G8 commitments for the upcoming year.
In terms of promoting good and responsive governance the G8 countries stated that they had secured, with other international partners, the entry into force of the UN Convention against Corruption in 2005 when 22 African but only 3 G8 countries ratified the convention. Also, 25 African countries signed up to the African Peer Review Mechanism and 3 of them completed the process. The countries promised to continue working towards ratifying the UN Convention against Corruption "as soon as possible", with discussions on monitoring and implementation mechanisms at the Conference of State Parties later this year and supporting the African Peer Review Mechanism whilst respecting countries ownership.
The G8 countries asserted as well having made a progress in improving transparency and accountability including the oil and gas industries through the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in which 15 African countries and 23 companies are included. However this initiative of course is still only a voluntary initiative making it very difficult to monitor compliance. According to the G8 they have also completed successfully the work at the OECD to strengthen anti-bribery requirements for those applying for export credits and credit guarantees. The G8 committed during the upcoming year to continue to encourage wider implementation of the EITI and other resource transparency programmes in resource-rich African countries.
Development finance
There was an update on progress on Africa, but there were no new announcements and G8 readers simply repeated the promises they made last year. These include: Official Development Assistance (ODA) to Africa of $25bn a year by 2010, out of an OECD estimated $50bn worldwide aid. The OECD estimates that ODA from Development Assistance Committee members rose 31% to US$107 billion in 2005, 75% of which was from G8 members. However according to Eurodad figures, €13.5bn or nearly one third of last years’ European ODA was not providing any new aid for developing countries since it included countries’ spending on debt cancellation, housing refugees and on educating foreign students in their own countries. The G8 stated that it is "taking steps" to help African countries to mobilize the full range of development finance, as it has agreed in the Monterrey Consensus.
In terms of debt relief the G8 declared that the IMF and IDA have implemented their proposal to cancel debts owed by eligible Heavily Indebted Poor Countries and that African Development Fund is expected to implement it soon. The G8 said that 24 more countries will be benefiting from Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) as soon as they complete the HIPC process. The G8 also commented on Nigeria’s $30 billion debt deal with the Paris Club but failed to mention that in order to benefit from this write-off Nigeria will pay-out $12.4bn to creditors with 3 G8 members –UK, France and Germany- taking the biggest slices of this cash. The G8 countries promise to ensure the full implementation and financing of MDRI according to their earlier commitments made and on a fair burden-share basis and preserving long-term debt sustainability through the implementation of the World Bank/IMF Debt Sustainability Framework for Low-Income Countries.
The G8 countries are working on the implementation of the March 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and have started to conduct a survey on monitoring its’ implementation. Whilst there have been some attempts to move forwards on this, much greater political will is still required in order to make real progress on the commitments made in February 2005.
There was no mention of the debt of the CEE/CIS region despite Russian President Vladimir Putin committing to put it on the agenda and despite the civil society declaration from NGOs in the region. The growing debt burden of this region seems at the moment then, to be off the political agenda.
Read also the Eurodad report: G8 debt deal one year on: What happened and what next?
