While the G20 Finance Ministers will meet by videoconference on 15 April, the Oxfam organisation called on world leaders on Thursday 9 April to agree on an “Economic Rescue Plan For All” in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The rescue package, which should allow poor countries to give subsidies to those who have lost their income, could be financed by, among other things, “the immediate cancellation of 1 trillion dollars worth of developing country debt payments in 2020” and by “the creation of at least 1 trillion dollars in new international reserves, known as Special Drawing Rights”, the organisation said.
Half a billion people could be plunged into poverty if governments, particularly those in the EU, do not take urgent action now, Oxfam warns.
At EU level, the organisation makes a number of specific recommendations, including the use of ‘helicopter money’ by the European Central Bank (ECB), the creation of a European solidarity tax on wealth or immediate coordination on a tax on digital services to finance Member States’ economic recovery programmes.
While Oxfam believes that the measures taken so far by the European Commission and the ECB are “important steps in the right direction”, it believes that a monitoring mechanism should be put in place to ensure that the resources freed up by these measures actually benefit the most vulnerable sectors of the economy.
See the report: https://bit.ly/2JRVmBv (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)