Self-Reliance in Poor Countries Oct02 |
Bashir
Khanbhai, Conservative MEP for the East of England, has received
overwhelming support from the European Parliament for his own-initiative
report on EU aid to encourage self-reliance in developing countries. The
report, presented to the Parliament's meeting in Strasbourg today,
emphasises that in order to eradicate poverty, the EU must direct future
aid programmes towards establishing capacity of food production and
support for the basic needs of the population, such as health and
education. "This
would give the world's poorest people a stake in their own rural
economies," said Mr Khanbhai. The
issue of EU and US farm subsidies and the need for urgent reform is also
addressed in Mr Khanbhai's report. He stresses that the generous subsidies
allocated to Western farmers, e.g. CAP, have resulted in huge food
surpluses that are often dumped on the markets of poor countries,
devastating local farmers. Speaking
after the vote, Mr Khanbhai said, "Almost 1 billion people living on
less than US$1 a day, live in rural areas of developing countries. I have
always stressed the importance of encouraging self-reliance and I believe
that this should be achieved through investment, technology transfer and
technical training in rural areas. "Financial
aid and the transfer of skills is still not enough, however. We need
institutional reform, not just by promoting good governance in developing
countries, but also by reducing the unfair subsidies in the West which
lead to the damaging distortion of world markets." ENDS
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