The Secretariat of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States

ACP PRESS RELEASE:19 JUNE 2009 – Leading to the United Nations High-level Conference on the Global Financial and Economic Crisis and its impact on Development being held in New York, United States, next week, the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group hopes that urgent solutions will be found, so as to avoid recurrences of such severe crisis in the future.

ACP states are amongst those hard hit by the crisis and want solutions to focus on countering the effects of the crisis.

Since the crisis started, ACP states have experienced major falls in their export earnings; foreign direct investment has slowed down, official development aid declined and remittance flows have shrunken.

The ACP Group believes that the crisis poses a severe threat to its members, compromising not only the efforts and economic gains achieved over the past years, but also the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The ACP Group underscores that the impact of the crisis would undoubtedly exert strong pressure on the macro-economic balance of the ACP countries.
ACP cited sub-Saharan Africa as an example, where growth outlook has dropped to 1.5 percent for 2009, against 5.4 percent in 2008 and 6.8 percent in 2007.

The ACP said that the statistics were equally alarming from one country to another and projected that some of its members posting negative economic growth would fall into recession in 2009.

In urging the global community to act, the ACP Group suggested that more effort should focus on poor and vulnerable countries that are the real victims of the crisis.

The ACP Group said that the poor countries are more than ever in need of funds to compensate for the decline in national revenues, and to drive investments in view of maintaining and boosting growth.

ACP states have made efforts at the national and international levels to address the crisis.

At the national level, many ACP countries have implemented various measures aimed at mitigating the effects of the crisis but cautioned that with limited room to maneouvre, governments had insufficient reaction capacity and desperately needed additional resources.

At the international level, the ACP welcomes various initiatives and decisions taken by the G20 in London in April, the European Commission’s declaration in the same month to provide aid to developing countries, and the UN high-level conference on the crisis to be held in New York from 24 – 26 June 2009.

The ACP Group said that any effort to increase the volume of aid to low-income countries would also be most welcomed under the current circumstances and urges the developed countries to intensify their efforts to honour their official development (ODA) commitments.

At the same time, the group said that, in-depth reflection on the legitimacy and effectiveness of the international financial institutions should be a priority.

“The current international financial architecture presents weaknesses that are urgently in need of reform to better reflect the world economic environment,” the ACP Group, said.

It further stressed that reforms should aim to give low income countries increased representation and responsibility in the international fora and make the international system more transparent and effective, better able to anticipate the risks of a crisis, and with the essential objective of development for all countries.

ACP Group will be represented at the United Nations High-level Conference on the Global Financial and Economic Crisis and its impact on development in New York, United States by Minister of Planning and Aid Coordination of Solomon Islands, Hon. Steve Abana.

ENDS