Cut The Debt Of Poor Countries, Pope Tells IMF, World Bank

POPE Francis has told world financial chiefs that poor countries hit by the economic impact of the coronavirus need to have their debt burden reduced and be given a greater say in global decision making.

In a letter to the participants of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank’s annual spring meeting, the pope said the pandemic had forced the world to come to terms with interrelated socioeconomic, ecological, and political crises.

“The notion of recovery cannot be content to a return to an unequal and unsustainable model of economic and social life, where a tiny minority of the world’s population owns half of its wealth,” the pontiff said in the letter dated April 4.

He called for a new “global plan” that “necessarily means giving poorer and less developed nations an effective share in decision-making and facilitating access to the international market.”

A spirit of global solidarity “demands at