11 May 2000
Contents:
- Subscriptions due for future
bulletins and education kit.
- AFTINET strategies and actions
-report from the working group.
- Export Credit Agencies- Exporting
destruction by James Arvanitakis, AID/WATCH.
- Australian Democrats Trade
statement.
- Useful bulletins and
publications.
- Coming events:
a) AFTINET/AIDWATCH/NUS Seminar Series starts May 29.
b) World Economic Forum activities Melbourne, September
9-11.
c) World March of Women on October 17.
- Petition - please distribute as
widely as possible.
- Subscription form.
1) Subscriptions due for future bulletins
and education kit.
Many organisation and individuals have subscribed to
AFTINET to help cover our administrative costs. If you have not subscribed, please do so
if you wish to continue to receive the bulletin and to get a copy of the education kit on
the WTO, which will be sent to subscribers next week.
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2) AFTINET strategies and actions - report
from the working group.
The Working Group has organised:
- regular Bulletins and brief alerts on coming events
- the basic education kit on the WTO
- a series of four monthly seminars on Global Institutions and
Protest oriented towards students and activists- on May 29, June 27, July 24 and August 21
see coming events below for details.
- speakers at public events and seminars and media coverage
(ABC Life Matters 28/4 and forthcoming Radio Eye and Encounter Programs, interview in the
Bulletin, May 3-9, and shorter news items in various newspapers)
- advertising of Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
briefings and regular input from AFTINET members on policy issues
- discussions with Opposition political parties on their trade
policy
- a petition to the Senate which calls for a halt to further
WTO negotiations and an inquiry
- into Australia’s relations with the WTO - see copy
below
- work on a website which should be established by June
- liaison with similar groups in New Zealand the Asia Pacific
North America and Europe.
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3) Export Credit Agencies - Exporting
destruction
by James Arvanitakis, AID/WATCH
What’s the common element to the recent crisis in
Bougainville, nuclear technology exports to China, weapons exports to Indonesia, the Ok
Tedi mine in PNG and the proposed Nam Theun 2 hydropower project in Laos? An export credit
agency. Specifically, financing by the Australian government owned Export Finance and
Insurance Corporation, or EFIC.Export credit agencies (ECAs)have been growing in size
quietly yet phenomenally over the past decade.
Now the new big kids on the international finance block,
ECAs lent $US 105 billion to low income countries in 1999,more than double that provided
by the more well-known World Bank and other multilateral development banks. ECAs are
generally wholly government-owned bilateral agencies in high income countries and the
loans they make are tied loans so that low income countries can buy their corporations
’ exports. EFIC has made loans to the Indonesian government to buy Australian weapons
systems and to China to buy Australian nuclear technology.
The Three Gorges Dam in China is a prominent example of the
kind of project that can get up with ECA support. The project will severely disrupt the
ecology of the Yangtze River, involve a reservoir area as long as England and force the
resettlement of around 1.8 million people. Even the World Bank wouldn ’t touch it.
But German, Swiss, French, Canadian, British, Norwegian and Swedish ECAs all offered to
back the project through export credits or guarantees.
Australia ’s EFIC guaranteed commercial bank finance
for the Bougainville copper mine. The social and ecological destruction caused by the mine
was a key flashpoint leading to the ten-year Bougainville war of independence. EFIC
’s doing the same with other mines in PNG.
ECAs also provide insurance to protect the profits of
investors who put money into infrastructure projects in low income countries. Credit risk
insurance protects investment against non-payment for exports. Political risk insurance
protects overseas investments against nationalisation, war or other major political
disturbance. With the insurance provided directly to corporations and loans their
customers, ECAs are providing massive public subsidy for corporations - corporate welfare
on a truly global scale.
STANDARDS AND PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY
The role of export credit agencies is open to argument.
Some argue that they play an important role in promoting exports. Despite any such claims,
it is important to note that EFIC continues to provide support to corporations without
requiring a commitment to environmental or human right standards.
The United States has two ECAs. They are the only two to
have any standards at all. They’re not high - for example, no involvement in projects
that require the resettlement of 5000 or more people. In a sense each one of us is a
‘shareholder’ in EFIC, as it funded by our taxes.Yet requests for information
about how EFIC is using taxpayers’ money are invariably blocked by claims of
‘commercial in confidence’. Even parliamentarians in Canberra are given no more
than cursory answers by bureaucrats about EFIC involvement in projects overseas. But there
is information that could be released about EFIC activities without disadvantage to the
corporations it supports. We have a right to know how public money is being used.
If we as taxpayers in Australia can’t get information
about EFIC, what about the people in low income countries who will be resettled or whose
water supply is destroyed, because of EFIC-financed dams? Ultimately, ECAs need to be
accountable to both the taxpayers whose money they use and the people in low income
countries who are impacted by their projects.
THE CAMPAIGN
Activists from around the world working on international
human rights, environmental and social justice campaigns have analysed ECA-financed
destructive development projects. They are campaigning to make their activities
transparent and publicly accountable, and to establish standards by which projects must be
evaluated.
AID/WATCH and the Mineral Policy Institute (MPI) produced
an analysis of EFIC in November 1999. In response, EFIC is now preparing to release
proposals for environmental and social standards. AID/WATCH and the MPI will monitor and
review EFIC ’s proposed standards as part of the campaign.
If you would like more information please contact AID/WATCH
on (02) 9387-5210 or aidwatch@mpx.com.au,
or the Mineral Policy Institute on (02) 9387-5540 or mpi@mpi.org.au.
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4) Australian Democrats Trade Statement
In the last bulletin we noted the response of the ALP
Shadow Minister to the WTO Seattle meeting. Natasha Stott Despoja, the Democrats
spokesperson on Trade, in a statement to parliament in April, criticised the bias in WTO
rules which facilitate global commerce at the expense of local economic development. She
called for five key areas of trade policy reform: trade must be fair and ethical, it
should not contribute to the unjust enrichment of the wealthiest nations and corporations,
there must be a review of the effects of past trade liberalisation and the development of
permanent dialogue between trade institutions and those concerned with the environment and
the implementation of human rights and labour standards.
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5) Useful bulletins and publications
A useful bulletin called Focus on Trade is
produced by the Focus on the Global South based in Bangkok. Recent issue no.48 covered the
debate on trade and labour rights and no.49 covered the IMF Washington protests. You can
subscribe and access back issues through the website at www.focusweb.org.
New Leaf or figleaf? A report on the World bank and
IMF globalisation strategy by Brendan Martin, which critically examines recent
changes in these organisation ’s strategies, available through www.brettonwoodsproject.org/reports.
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6) Coming events
a) AFTINET/AIDWATCH/NUS Seminar Series
1)Monday 29 May, 6pm - Room 5, Level 5, Wentworth Bldg,
(the building with the footbridge into it) Sydney University, City Rd, Darlington.
Global Institutions and Global Protest - the WTO,
the IMF & the World Bank.
Pat Ranald, Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network -
Global Institutions: What they say and what they really do.
Thea Ormerod - Jubilee 2000 - Campaigning to Drop the Debt
Jesse Wynhausen - local and global activism
2) Tuesday 27 June, 6.30 pm, Merewether Lecture Theatre 2,
University of Sydney, City Rd, Darlington.
What ’s wrong with Free Trade?
Maude Barlow,Chairperson,Council of Canadians and anti-MAI
activist
Canadian local and global campaigning on trade agreements
3) Monday 24 July, 6pm - Level 5, Wentworth Bldg, (the
building with the footbridge into it) Sydney University, City Rd, Darlington.
Global environment campaigns
Jim Green, Nuclear Physicist, Jabilluka and Lucas Heights
campaigns
Rayyar Farhat, Committee against Genetically Modified Food, on GMO campaigns
4) Monday 21 August, 6pm -Level 5, Wentworth Bldg, (the
building with the footbridge into it) Sydney University, City Rd, Darlington.
Corporate Power and Corporate Welfare
Lee Rhiannon , Greens MLC-Corporations and Olympic
sponsorship
James Arvanitakis - Aid or Trade? Corporations and the Aid Budget.
James Goodman - World Economic Forum meeting in Melbourne in September and planned
protests.
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b) World Economic Forum Activities
Melbourne 9-11 September
11 SEPTEMBER 2000 - STAND UP FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE
In September the World Economic Forum will hold the
Asia-Pacific Economic Summit, "Asia/Pacific in the 21st Century: Leveraging the new
drivers of growth." The World Economic Forum consists of the largest transnational
corporations in the world. It holds an annual summit to define its agendas and lobby
politicians at Davos in Switzerland each year, and also holds regional summits.
The Asia Pacific summit summit is jointly sponsored by the
Business Council of Australia and the Australian Davos Connection (the Australian arm of
the World Economic Forum) and will take place at the Crown Casino, Melbourne, over
September 11-13. Participants are being lured to the summit with opportunity to "meet
key leaders from business, politics and academia at a time when the eyes of the world will
be fixed on Australia,and they may coordinate their participation in the Summit with the
Olympic Games."
The S11 Alliance is a coalition of unionists,
environmentalists, students, human rights activists and community campaigners. It's
organising a rally for global justice and the environment on September 11.
Other activities include a conference on these themes at
the Victoria University of Technology on September 9. Further information is available at
the website www.s11.org .
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c) World March of Women 17 October
The World March of Women was initiated as a women’s
march against poverty in 1995 by a group of women in Canada in the lead-up to the UN
’s Fourth Women’s Conference.
Today, women in 146 countries are involved with 3,500
groups having endorsed the campaign. Its themes include an end to poverty; greater equity
in sharing of wealth between women and men; and an end to violence against women.
As Tuesday October 17th is both the United Nations
International Day for the Elimination of Poverty and the culmination of the seven-month
long campaign of the World March of Women in the Year 2000, the Australian coordinating
committee invites the women of Australia to contribute to the campaign to end poverty and
violence against women by initiating small-scale grass-roots style meetings in their own
workplaces/universities/schools/communities/neighbourhoods etc.
Contact World March of Women in the Year 2000 - Australia
c/o Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
(Australian Section)
email: cathpete@camtech.net.au
Fax: 08 8377 0706
Phone: 08 8296 4357
web site for Australia: http://www.uq.net.au/march2000/
web site for overseas: http://www.ffq.qc.ca/marche2000.
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7. Petition
(Click here to
locate the Petition elsewhere on this web site.)
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8. AFTINET SUBSCRIPTION FORM
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here to locate the Subscription Form elsewhere on this web site.)
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