Cape Town conference: Let’s admit who the losers are

Posted by Ollie Brock on June 6, 2007 at 3:12 PM

We need “a more balanced report on both the winners and the losers” of the world’s countries before we can improve equality in the world, said Trevor Manuel, South African Minister of Finance to a lunch at the 14th World Editors Forum today.

Speaking about the G8 conference this weekend, Mr Manuel said that protests on globalisation, as well as disagreements on climate change and the placement of anti-missile systems by the US in Poland, had overshadowed the more important issues to be discussed at the G8 conference – wealth distribution within and between countries.

He pointed out the improvement in the balance of global GDP in recent decades, and said that with the integration of the world’s economies at its current rate, our global institution needs reform. He recalled the international effort in creating these institutions following the second world war.

He said the press role in this was to ask “who wins, who loses, and who cares?”

By Oliver Brock, Wits University Journalism

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