MANAMA: The developing economies with limited capacity for fiscal expansion to mitigate the effects of the ongoing financial meltdown will be hit hard, Bahrain’s minister of finance warned yesterday.
“The impact of the financial crisis will be more drastic on developing countries, particularly the lower income developing countries, those that cannot afford to, or at the most, can envisage only the bare minimum of a fiscal expansion effort,” Sheikh Ahmed Bin Mohammed Al-Khalifa told the Joint Ministerial Committee of the Boards of Governors of the World Bank and the IMF in Washington.
“At a time of financial crisis, the need for cohesive governance and strong oversight is paramount,” he added.
“Instead of wasting valuable time and scarce resources on blame, we need to harness the very same forces of globalization to pull us collectively out of this mess,” he asserted.
“People in many of these developing countries have barely survived the spike in food prices, and now they stand to lose everything. Once these people sell off their few assets — the land and livestock that they live off — they will starve and their babies will die,” Sheikh Ahmed said.
