INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM : SUMMIT MASTER PRECIS

 

Paris : Finance summit ends with minor steps on developing nations' debt. The French president is hopeful that the pledge to deliver $100 billion to poorer nations will finally be fulfilled.

A global summit seeking to overhaul the international financial system wraps up Friday after taking small steps toward easing the debt burden of developing nations weighed down by climate and economic crises.

While host country France pitched the conference as a consensus-building exercise, leaders are under pressure to produce clear outcomes from the two-day meeting as economies stagger under growing debt after successive crises in recent years.

The summit comes amid growing recognition of the scale of the financial challenges ahead, with warnings that the world's ability to curb global warming at tolerable levels is reliant on a massive increase in clean energy investment in developing countries.

One key announcement on the summit's first day on Thursday came from IMF director Kristalina Georgieva, who said a pledge to shift $100 billion of liquidity boosting ''special drawing rights'' into a climate and poverty fund had been met.

Work Bank president Ajay Banga said the lender would introduce a ''pause'' mechanism on debt repayments for countries hit by a crisis so they could ''focus on what matters'' and ''stop worrying about the bill that is going to come''.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he was hopeful that a pledge to deliver $100 billion a year in climate finance to poorer nations by 2020 would finally be fulfilled this year - although actual confirmation the money has been delivered will take months if not years.

This week, the International Energy Agency said annual investment just for clean energy in these countries will need to jump to $2 trillion within a decade.

This is crucial to keep alive the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to ''well below'' two degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, and below 1.5 C if possible. [AFP]