PM Imran presents 10-point action plan to avert economic crisis

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday proposed a ten-point agenda to world leaders to avert economic collapse due to the Covid-19 pandemic and called for debt suspension, drawing rights of $500 billion and return of stolen assets stashed in rich countries.

He was addressing the UN General Assembly’s two-day special session, which opened Thursday, on the response to the deadly coronavirus pandemic and forge a united path forward to better recovery, including access to a vaccine.

In a recorded video message to the Summit from Islamabad, the prime minister said the pandemic caused immense human suffering and created the deepest global economic contraction since the great depression of the 1930s.

Khan pointed out that nearly 100 million people in developing countries would fall back into extreme poverty while on the other hand the rich countries had injected $13 trillion as fiscal stimulus to revive their economies.

“Developing countries just do not have the resources to afford such a massive economic stimulus … They are struggling to find even a fraction of the $ 2-3 trillion they require to recover from the pandemic,” Imran Khan said.

“If economic collapse is to be averted in a number of developing countries due to the Covid-19, the international community must identify and implement some key priority actions.

He proposed a ten-point agenda for urgent action, which called for;

One, debt suspension till the end of the pandemic for low income and most stressed countries;

Two, cancellation of debt of least developed countries;

Three, restructuring of the public sector debt of other developing countries under an agreed inclusive multilateral framework;

Four, a general allocation of special drawing rights of $500 billion;

Five, expanded concessional financing to lower income countries through multilateral development banks;

Six, creation of a new ‘liquidity and sustainability facility’, which should provide short term loans at lower costs;

Seven, fulfilment of the 0.7 % official development assistance commitments;

Eight, mobilizing the required $1.5 trillion annual investment in sustainable infrastructure;

Nine, achievement of the agreed target of mobilizing $100 billion per year for climate action in developing countries, and

Ten, immediate action to stop the massive illicit financial outflows from developing countries to rich countries, to offshore tax havens and at the same time, immediate return of their assets stolen by corrupt politicians and criminals back to these countries.

Prime Minister Imran Khan said “this one action, I assure you Mr. President, would benefit the poor countries more than all other measures put together”.