India seeks overhaul of global financial system

India on Sunday called for a thorough overhaul of the global system of financial oversight and regulatory mechanisms to save the developing world from an economic crisis not of their making.

India on Sunday called for a thorough overhaul of the global system of financial oversight and regulatory mechanisms to save the developing world from an economic crisis not of their making.

Addressing the World Bank-International Monetary Fund (IMF) Development Committee, Finance Minister P Chidambaram also asked the global community to consider immediate steps to reverse the unacceptable increases in food prices.
These increases threaten to negate the benefits to the poor nations from aid, trade and debt relief, the finance minister said as the two day IMF-Bank Spring Meetings came to a close.

Noting that "the origin of the present turmoil lay in the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US", Chidambaram said, "As in the case of global warming, developing countries are threatened by a crisis, not of their making and one for which they have not been responsible in any way."
"While the effects of the turbulence are still reverberating across the entangled financial systems of the world, they have clearly impacted markets in several developing countries as well," the minister added.

With developing countries too showing early signs of a slowdown after higher than expected growth rates in 2007, "We now need a thorough review and overhaul of financial oversight and regulatory mechanisms through the entire global system," Chidambaram said.
The dramatic rise in the price of crude oil and food is adding to the woes of the developing world, Chidambaram said while asking the producer nations to seriously contemplate the management of production and pricing policy.

Noting that the unprecedented increase in food prices has come on the back of high energy and fertilizer prices and an increased use of food crops for bio-fuels, Chidambaram asked the developed countries to cut off subsidies on food crops for bio-fuel production.
"In a world where there is hunger and poverty, there is no policy justification for diverting food crops towards bio-fuels," he said. "Converting food into fuel is neither good policy for the poor nor for the environment."

Chidambaram welcomed the shift in focus in the proposed "New Deal for Global Food Policy" from traditional food aid to a broader concept of food and nutritional assistance and on medium-to-long term efforts to boost agricultural productivity in developing countries.
Donor countries must also increase funding to the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations' Central Emergency Relief Fund (CERF), the minister said asking for immediate support to poor countries in their efforts to alleviate hunger.

"It is becoming starker by the day that unless we act fast for a global consensus on the price spiral, the social unrest induced by food prices in several countries will conflagrate into a global contagion leaving no country - developed or otherwise - unscathed," Chidambaram said.

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