The Guardian

London, July 9:

Months of hard bargaining between the G8 countries on a package of financial help for Africa ended with an 11th-hour deal yesterday in which the world’s richest countries agreed to provide an extra $48 billion in aid worldwide by 2010.

Concessions by Japan’s prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, and the German chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, broke the logjam after talks rolled into the final day of the summit. Koizumi said Japan would increase its aid budget by $10 billion over the next five years, while Schroder said he would use a tax on air travel to meet Germany’s ambitious aid targets. With less progress than Britain had hoped for on trade, Tony Blair said the deal on Africa was not all that campaigners wanted but insisted it represented real progress. “There are commitments here that are hugely significant,” he said.

Blair said the summit was an advance on anything that had happened before, but recognised that there was more to be done. Britain had wanted to go further on eliminating the export subsidies which allow the west to dump excess produce on global markets, but was forced to compromise. The summit merely committed itself to setting a credible date for scrapping export subsidies, which Blair said he expected to be 2010.

“It isn’t the end of poverty in Africa but it is the hope that it can be ended,” Blair said, “It is the definitive expression of our collective will to act in the face of death and disease and conflict that is preventable.” Under the deal, the G8 pledged to increase aid by ‘around $50 billion’ a year by 2010.

Assistance to Africa will increase by $25 billion, more than doubling the flows in 2004. Britain had feared the G8 leaders would backslide on commitments made by their finance ministers at a meeting in London last month.

In the end, however, they endorsed agreement to write off debts owed by up to 28 countries to the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the IMF.

UK sources said the communique represented a significant advance and were pleased that the G8 had endorsed a plan for treatment for HIV/Aids by 2010.