November 20, 2003	Thursday	Ramazan 24, 1424

DAKAR: African finance experts said the International Monetary Fund could take more dramatic measures such as selling some of its gold reserves to ease the impoverished continent’s debt burden.

After a two-day meeting in Senegal, experts from African finance ministries and regional institutions warned on Tuesday that Africa risked failing to meet the Millennium Development Goals because of crushing debt payments.

The UN goals set in 2000 aim to reduce global poverty by 2015 by halving the number of people who earn less than a dollar a day and have no access to clean water.

The meeting, organized by the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Africa and Senegalese authorities, suggested selling IMF resources to fund further debt reduction.

“We estimated, for example, that selling half the IMF’s gold reserves would amply finance all the extra reduction necessary for heavily indebted poor countries,” it said in a statement.

Many African countries are among the most heavily indebted in the world and are eligible for relief under a programme set up by the World Bank and the IMF.

Under the so-called Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, governments have to conform to IMF reform programmes in exchange for a portion of their debt.

So far, only eight countries have reached their “completion point” under the initiative, which means the stage at which debt relief is granted unconditionally.

The experts said $30 to $50 billion was needed to attain the development goals meant to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015.

“The experts noted with great concern that given current trends, Africa will be the only region in the world where the number of poor people will be higher in 2015 than it was in 1990,” the statement said.

They said fluctuating prices for exports, which earn precious hard currency, also prevented many African countries from emerging from the debt trap.—Reuters