France's Chirac backs tax to fight world poverty
Date: 04-Sep-02
Country: SOUTH AFRICA
Author: Gerard Bon
Chirac steered clear of the "Tobin Tax" on foreign exchange trading, a popular idea among anti-globalisation activists, but insisted on broad-based funding to help bridge the gap between rich and poor and finance sustainable growth.
"Let us seek new forms of funding, for example a solidarity tax on the riches generated by globalisation," said Chirac, one of the world leaders in Johannesburg seeking an action plan to slash poverty while sparing the environment.
A Chirac aide spelled out possible areas for levies, telling journalists: "It could be a tax on airplane tickets, on carbon dioxide, on health products sold in industrialised countries, and indeed on international financial transactions."
Championed by non-governmental groups as a way both to raise funds and to deter financial speculation, the Tobin Tax has attracted much interest, particularly in Europe, but appears to have fallen out of favour lately.
European officials have noted possible problems with the tax proposed by U.S. Nobel Prize winner James Tobin in the 1970s. One is that financial markets would simply move to those countries that chose not to apply it.
FRANCE TO DOUBLE DEVELOPMENT AID
Putting his money where his mouth was, Chirac said France would over five years double the amount of development aid to 0.7 percent of gross domestic product, the level to which countries have committed themselves at past development meetings but which in most cases they have so far failed to achieve.
Chirac aides pointed to studies suggesting global development aid would have to be doubled to around $100 billion to fight poverty adequately and noted that sum still represented only a fraction of the world's annual trade and financial transactions.
The conservative leader, re-elected for five years in May, also repeated his call for the creation of a new "World Environment Organisation" which would be charged with monitoring adherence to environmental treaties.
Chirac says he has a passion for "green" issues and sees France having a special role in advancing the environmental cause. His detractors question his actual commitment, noting for example his decision in 1995 to hold nuclear tests in the Pacific.
Chirac urged leaders at the World Summit on Sustainable Development to send a signal from Johannesburg that the Kyoto protocol on fighting global warming - which the United States has rejected - be ratified, as France has already done.
