Tax havens and CTT discussed at ECOSOC and FfD hearings
April 25, 2008. - Eurodad just published a note that has some interesting news on tax
havens and innovative financing mechanisms from recent World Bank/IMF
Spring Meetings in Washington and the Spring ECOSOC and FfD hearings
in New York. See two extracts below.
Whole report and links to
conference papers are available in a pdf file at
http://www.eurodad.org/whatsnew/articles.aspx?id=2242
"Currency transaction taxes and responsible financing at the UN
The Special high-level meeting of the Economic and Social Council with the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development took place on Monday, 14 April 2008, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The overall theme of the meeting was "Coherence, coordination and cooperation in the context of the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus, including new challenges and emerging issues".
Civil society organisations were delighted to hear support for a currency transaction tax by the Secretary General in his opening statement to the council. He described the currency transaction tax as a "a minuscule tax that is not expected to materially affect market operations while having the potential to generate billions of dollars that can be allocated for development" and said that this type of tax could be best implemented in a cooperative manner by countries. The need for a currency transaction tax was supported by Elena Gerebizza, from CRBM, who as one of the civil society representatives in the afternoon session raised this issue together with a call to address capital flight and tax havens. There was a lot of support for addressing capital flight from the Norwegian delegation, who are currently leading a taskforce on flight of illicit flows from developing countries."
"Aid and review of the Monterrey Consensus
As preparations for the Doha summit on Financing for Development gear up, UN member countries and representatives from civil society and the business sector came together in New York on Tuesday 15th and Wednesday 16th April for a review of the Chapter 4 of the Monterrey Consensus. This is one of several consultations that the UN has held in the last few months. Tuesday's review session began with excellent panel presentations, which helped instigate a more interactive dialogue for the first part of the day. The discussion and subsequent statements focused on both aid quantity and quality issues. Considerable attention was paid to innovative sources of finance, in particular airline taxes. However there was a clear consensus that these innovative forms of finance have to be additional to ODA amounts. Concerns about the stagnating and even falling aid amounts from a number of donor countries were widespread."
Reported by Matti Ylönen
Last modified
2008-04-25 07:41 PM
