The presidents of Brazil, India, and South Africa on Tuesday urged the world’s rich countries to contain their financial crises and prevent the global economy from slipping into a double dip recession.
Rousseff, attending her first IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) summit, also called for an end to currency protectionism and for strong commitments from the world’s economic giants to control the debt crisis on the periphery of the Euro zone.
“We need a credible agreement from European countries to prevent the crisis from getting out of control. We cannot be held hostage of old fashioned visions or paradigms,” she said.
Rousseff also reminded the IMF and IDB (Inter American Development Bank) should grant emerging economies more decision power. “They should give (emerging countries) a voting power to match its ascending weight at the world’s economy,” she observed.
At the occasion, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said financial turmoil in Europe, the United States and Japan was hurting developing countries. “Developing countries cannot remain untouched by the negative impact of these developments,” Singh said.
The summit is meant to boost trade between the Asian, African and South American giants, to come up with measures to counter piracy in the Indian and Atlantic oceans and strengthen negotiating positions on climate change.
Support Against Corruption
Enrique Iglesias, the Secretary General of Ibero-America, praised the “courage” displayed by Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff who has been challenged by serious corruption allegations involving members of her cabinet.
“Corruption is something unpleasant and regrettable in any part of the world and obviously also in Brazil,” said Iglesias during an event to announce the launching of the New Economic Forum in Madrid, Spain.
“What is really encouraging is the firmness with which the President has addressed publicly the issue and resolved it, which is how it had to be done. This speaks highly of the courage of the president of Brazil to face those problems with no delays or contemplations”, he added.
Since Rousseff took office last January first her cabinet has lost five ministers, four of them to strong corruption allegations, exposed by the press.
The corruption allegations knocked out the cabinet chief, ministers of Agriculture, Transport and Tourism. Nelson Jobim from Defense stepped down over policy differences.
Before the ministers were ousted the Brazilian president was under strong pressure on veiled threats from the involved parties belonging to the ruling coalition.
But Ms Rousseff ordeal is not over: her Sports Minister has also been accused of involvement in corruption. The issue is particularly damaging since Orlando Silva is also involved in the organization of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.
Before leaving for a tour of African countries the Brazilian president met with Silva and said she would not pre-judge and accepted the arguments from the minister.
However on her return there could be news if Silva does not provide undisputable evidence he has not been involved in an alleged scam to ‘skim’ funds distributed among non government organizations which promote sports among Brazilian poor children as has been claimed by former aides.
