PM Abiy Ahmed stresses need to upgrade the global financial architecture

Addis Ababa, June 22, 2023 (FBC) – In his remarks at the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed stated that the developing world particularly the African countries are facing a cocktail of interconnected crises including a cost-of-living crisis, a financing crisis, a growth crisis, and a climate crisis.

“To address these challenges, we need to work hard together to urgently upgrade the global financial architecture for development — with the Multilateral Development Banks at the center – the goal of the Paris Forum,” the Prime Minister said.

“We can only tackle these issues head on if we implement reforms to strengthen the global financial architecture in the following areas:   First: Implement past pledges with resolve. We should keep past pledges in climate finance and on the rechanneling of Special Drawing Rights amounting to at least USD 100 Billion to MDBs such as the African Development Bank,” the Premier noted.

“Second: other initiatives to increase access to liquidity should rise to the top of the agenda. Third, we fully support the scaling up of the MDBs to push for faster progress on the SDBs and to tackle the challenge of adapting to climate change. Fourth, we need more international cooperation to improve the debt restructuring process, when this becomes necessary. For Common Framework, we need immediate debt service suspension,” the Prime Minister added.