BY MBONO MDLULI
MBABANE – Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg has called upon the World Bank to consider a certain amount of money as a debt write-off to help developing countries, especially those from Africa.
Minister Rijkenberg said this during a capacity building meeting that took place in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, which was about climate change, among other topics. The Minister said this during a panel discussion, where he was called upon to share with participants in the meeting on what has Eswatini done to reduce its fiscal deficit.
The panel discussion was organised by an entity known as the Global Citizen, a global movement that seeks to fight extreme poverty. The main reason for the panel was for the minister to explain how Eswatini was able to get it right, as far as reducing the deficit was concerned.
According to Minister Rijkenberg, the issue of the debt write-off was raised after he was asked to share, in his opinion, the one thing that needed to be done for the African continent to develop. That was when the minister stated that he would challenge the World Bank to consider debt write-off, rather than what he termed as debt pausing.
He said debt pausing was when the international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, would pause debt repayment on money loaned to certain countries. He said the debt pausing would be a bit inconvenient in the developing countries’ quest for developing themselves on something that was not of their making. The minister argued that the negative effects of climate change were not caused by African countries, but the African continent was only suffering the consequences of something it had not caused.
