Brazil’s Lula pleads for new world economic order
Source: AFP
UNITED NATIONS — Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday made a strong plea for a new world economic order in the wake of the global financial crisis.
“Because the global economy is interdependent, we are obliged to intervene across national borders and must therefore re-found the world economic order,” he said in a speech to the UN General Assembly.
Lula, who is to attend a summit of 20 leading developed and emerging economies hosted by US President Barack Obama in Pittsburgh later this week, reiterated his call for regulation of financial markets and an end to protectionism.
And he insisted anew that multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank must become “more representative and democratic” to deal with complex problems such as overhauling the international monetary system.
“Poor and developing countries must increase their share of control in the IMF and the World Bank,” he said.
Turning to Brazil’s domestic situation, he said his country had now emerged from a brief recession.
“Our economy has regained its impetus and shows promise for 2010. Foreign trade is recovering vitality, the labor market is doing amazingly well and macro-economic equilibrium has been preserved,” he added.
Much of the turnaround in Latin America’s biggest economy has been thanks to buoyant domestic consumption, spurred by government tax breaks and incentives to boost car sales in the hard-hit auto industry, state credit for exporters and central bank interest rate cuts.
Lula also vowed that his country would do its share to roll back global warming and would present “precise alternatives and commitments” at the crucial Copenhagen conference in December which aims to seal a new climate deal to succeed the landmark Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.
And the Brazilian leader, whose country has been lobbying to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council, said that “the United Nations and its Security Council can no longer be run under the same structures imposed after the Second World War.”
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