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There are 4 messages in this issue.

Topics in this digest:

1. AID TO AFRICA FALLS DRASTICALLY.
From: Carlos Ani
2. AIDS CARE FOR AFRICA AFFORDABLE, STUDY SAYS.
From: Carlos Ani
3. GERMAN GOVT PRESENTS ACTION PLAN TO FIGHT POVERTY.
From: Carlos Ani
4. ASIA URGED TO PUSH FOR GREATER CORPORATE GOVERNANCE.
From: Carlos Ani

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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2001 11:22:04 +0800
From: Carlos Ani
Subject: AID TO AFRICA FALLS DRASTICALLY.

AID TO AFRICA FALLS DRASTICALLY.

Development assistance to Africa has fallen
drastically and rich countries are not honoring their UN commitment to
devote
0.7 percent of their annual GDP to overseas aid, the Post of Zambia reports.

At a recent meeting with 22 African heads of state, World Bank President
James
Wolfensohn said it is painfully ironic that at the time when many African
governments were putting in place effective social and economic policies and
committing to reform development aid was being cut. And Zambian Finance
Deputy
Minister Godfrey Simasiku on Tuesday said the 0.7 percent of annual GDP
developed countries were supposed to commit was not being realized and
instead
what was going out as official development assistance (ODA) did not exceed
0.4
percent. Development assistance to Africa has fallen drastically from US
$32 per
head in 1990 to just US $9 per head as at 1998.

Simasiku asked developed nations and other partners not to give assistance
to
refugees alone. He advised that the international community must not only
deal
with side effects but must also be involved in the causes.

Wolfensohn said African leaders were determined as never before to lead
their
own renaissance but that they also needed increased development assistance
to
support those reforms and access to developed country markets. He observed
that
the difference between these figures was worth $100 billion a year. "For
millions, this is the difference between life and death," he said.

The story notes a new World Bank report on Aid and Reform in Africa
showcasing
lessons from ten case studies, including Zambia, states that foreign aid can
help key economic reforms take root in developing countries provided
recipient
governments and their people broadly support the need for change because
without
this "country ownership", external cajoling or donor-imposed
"conditionality"
was unlikely to make poor countries adopt reforms which they oppose.

=========
Carlos Ani
Microfinance Consultant
Email: [email protected]
=========

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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2001 11:23:05 +0800
From: Carlos Ani
Subject: AIDS CARE FOR AFRICA AFFORDABLE, STUDY SAYS.

AIDS CARE FOR AFRICA AFFORDABLE, STUDY SAYS.

Millions of people with AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa could be treated with
sophisticated antiretroviral drugs for about $1,100 per patient annually,
the
Washington Post (p.A16) reports a Harvard study released yesterday says.
The
study, signed by 128 Harvard researchers, physicians, and economists, argues
that the price is one that the world's richest nations can easily afford to
pay
and calls for 3 million Africans to enter treatment within the next five
years.
The $1,100 figure covers the drugs themselves-calculated to be provided "at
cost" by pharmaceutical companies-as well as clinical trials and
epidemiologic
studies conducted by international experts to gauge the effectiveness of
various
treatment approaches.

The proposal also calls on wealthy nations to dramatically increase their
current expenditures for international AIDS programs and to pool their
donations
into a "global trust fund" jointly administered by the UNAIDS program and
the
World Health Organization. Jeffrey Sachs, director of Harvard's Center for
International Development and a signer of the proposal, said the costs could
reach $7 billion annually-including prevention programs and
non-antiretroviral
treatments-in five years, of which the US should pay about one-third.

The study notes that treatment for AIDS is necessary for economic
development,
USA Today (p.1D) reports. Without treatment, productive people will die,
leaving crucial jobs unfilled. In Zambia, teachers are dying of AIDS as
quickly
as they are trained, says the story.

Sachs said that a comprehensive plan for treatment is overdue, particularly
now
that several drug companies have cut prices on their AIDS drugs in Africa,
the
Wall Street Journal (p.B10) reports. Still, Sachs said, he is asking the
pharmaceutical industry to make all AIDS drugs available at cost in
sub-Saharan
Africa.

Meanwhile, an editorial in the Washington Post (p.A26) says that 20 years
into
the AIDS epidemic, there has been significant progress in treating AIDS and
halting its symptoms. But on the most important long-term weapon, an AIDS
vaccine, research has lagged. That is partly because of the scientific
difficulty of the puzzle-but mostly because of economic factors that steer
companies' efforts and investments toward drugs.

The promising early results of tests of an AIDS vaccine on monkeys,
announced by
Merck and Co. at a scientific meeting last weekend, are a turnaround on both
counts. Though not the only vaccine experiments to report progress,
Merck's are
significant both for the scientific approach they describe and for the
signal
they send of serious involvement by a major drug company.

But far from ending the race for a vaccine, the Merck results should speed
it
up. HIV's multiple strains and its ability to mutate quickly mean a
combination
of vaccines may ultimately be needed. And the scientific breakthrough, if
it
pans out, is only a tiny fraction of what needs to be done. If Merck or
some
other researcher can finish testing a vaccine in three to five years-a
super-optimistic estimate-it will still face the stiff challenges of
getting it
to the destitute and hard-to-reach populations that need it most.

Companies typically market vaccines first to developed countries, where high
profits can recover the costs of research. For AIDS, where 95 percent of
the
15,000 new infections a day occur in Africa, that pattern would be tragic.
Until now the vast majority of the $20 billion a year spent by governments
on
AIDS has gone to treatment. A vaccine, even if it ends up emerging from a
big
drug company, will likewise need significant public support to find its
mark,
says the editorial.

Further, former US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler
writes in USA Today (p.11A) that US President Bush has the opportunity to
save
millions of lives by a tax break for the pharmaceutical industry-one large
enough to spur the major drug companies to make AIDS therapies available to
the
Third World at no cost, the only price most who live there can afford.

If Bush acts, Kessler says, other pieces of the international AIDS battle
could
fall into place. Prevention and education could become the focus they
should
be. Developing nations and their non-governmental allies could manage drug
delivery and health care. US tax incentives for pharmaceutical companies
would
bless developing countries with the same progress against AIDS as
industrialized
nations now enjoy.

Without such incentives, AIDS will lay waste to the world, creating
conditions
comparable to the devastation of the bubonic plague in medieval Europe.
AIDS is
leveling Africa, and threatens Asia and Latin America, writes Kessler.

Meanwhile, BBC Online reports that the South African government has released
a
long-awaited report on AIDS in South Africa, but the findings show a deep
divide
between panel members. President Thabo Mbeki's comments last year that HIV
was
not necessarily the primary cause of AIDS led to widespread condemnation and
there were hopes that the panel would lay the matter to rest once and for
all.

=========
Carlos Ani
Microfinance Consultant
Email: [email protected]
=========

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 3
Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2001 11:23:34 +0800
From: Carlos Ani
Subject: GERMAN GOVT PRESENTS ACTION PLAN TO FIGHT POVERTY.

GERMAN GOVT PRESENTS ACTION PLAN TO FIGHT POVERTY.

Germany yesterday was the first industrialized nation to pass an action
plan to
fight extreme poverty, reports Die Welt, (Germany, p. 4). Through the
program,
presented to the cabinet and passed yesterday, it is hoped that extreme
poverty
will drop by 50 percent in 2015, as agreed at the UN Millennium Summit last
September. Some 1.2 billion people in the world live in extreme poverty,
which
according to World Bank criteria means they are living on less than $1 a
day.

Also reporting, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany, p.1) notes that
German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said that under the
plan,
the policies of other ministries will also support the fight against
poverty.
The fight against poverty is today an overarching aim of development policy
today, she noted, with 53 percent of bilateral development aid going to
poverty
reduction. "In 2005, we aim to raise this to 65 percent," Wieczorek-Zeul
said.

Church groups praised the passing of the action plan, notes Die Welt, but
the
FAZ notes that the German Christian Democratic opposition said the plan
would be
useless unless it was backed up by financial resources.

=========
Carlos Ani
Microfinance Consultant
Email: [email protected]
=========

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 4
Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2001 11:24:45 +0800
From: Carlos Ani
Subject: ASIA URGED TO PUSH FOR GREATER CORPORATE GOVERNANCE.

ASIA URGED TO PUSH FOR GREATER CORPORATE GOVERNANCE.

Asian countries must continue to pursue greater transparency and corporate
governance even if global economic conditions worsen, Agence France-Presse
reports experts said today. Otherwise, countries in the region run the
risk of
losing their long-term competitiveness in a globalize economy, said the
experts
attending a conference on corporate governance.

"If you want to compete in the global economy, you need to attract long-term
capital," said Olivier Fremond, a program coordinator at the World Bank.
"Therefore you need to comply with international standards."

Fremond noted that corporate governance was essential to economic
development
because it would improve the flow of private capital into developing
countries
as public funds dry up. "At the World Bank, we view corporate governance as
having a major importance in the development agenda," he said. "We
consider it
a critical part of creating the investment climate which will allow
developing
countries to broaden and deepen their access to capital."

With public funds inadequate to meet investment needs in emerging markets,
"private funds must be mustered," he said. "But to attract private capital,
corporate governance reform is essential," he said.

The three-day meeting in Singapore, organized by the OECD, the World Bank
and
the ADB, will propose a reform agenda to be submitted to governments,
private
groups and international organizations, the story notes. Reuters also
reports.

News of the conference in Singapore comes as AFP notes in a separate report
that
the UN yesterday endorsed the use of capital controls as a mechanism to
fend off
fiscal meltdown, saying measures like those adopted by Malaysia could help
prevent contagion and panic. "In some circumstances capital controls may be
necessary on a temporary basis," said UN Economic and Social Commission for
Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP) executive secretary Kim Hak-Su. "There needs
to be a destigmatization of capital controls."

=========
Carlos Ani
Microfinance Consultant
Email: [email protected]
=========