On behalf of the U.S. government, I would like to thank Antigua and Barbuda for facilitating discussions on this important resolution. The United States is a proud partner of Caribbean nations and is pleased to join consensus on this resolution.
This resolution highlights some of the unique vulnerabilities and urgent economic challenges facing the Caribbean region and its nations, and we hope this action will encourage others to partner with the Caribbean to bolster the region’s resilience to climate-based natural disasters.
The United States wishes to clarify a few policy positions related to this resolution. In reference to PP20, we note that debt swaps, in an appropriate context, may be useful tools for supporting certain policy goals, including climate adaptation.
It is important, however, to clearly distinguish between attempts to use debt swaps to achieve policy goals versus attempts to use debt swaps to address debt sustainability issues. Debt swaps are generally weak and inappropriate tools to address fundamental debt sustainability issues.
Debt swaps cannot resolve large scale debt crises, nor can they replace reform-backed IMF programs and debt treatments designed to restore long-run debt sustainability in specific cases. To be clear, we emphasize that we do not support the usage of debt swaps to address debt sustainability issues, and we do not recognize this language as indicating our support for such.
For our position on the transfer of technology, trade, and the World Trade Organization, we refer delegations to our general statement delivered earlier this afternoon.
Thank you.
Original source can be found here.
