NEW YORK CITY — Secretary  of  Foreign Affairs Blas F. Ople,  presiding  over a  UN  General  Assembly roundtable on financing for development, yesterday asked developed countries and international financial institutions to consider a debt swap for anti-poverty programs which would help poor countries realize the UN millennium goal of halving the incidence of poverty by the year 2015.

Ople chaired the first roundtable, attended by 24 countries from Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America, organized by the UN general assembly to review the regional dimensions of the implementation of the commitments made in the so-called "Monterey Consensus" held in Monterrey, Mexico in 2002. Under the consensus, the developing countries agreed to take responsibility for domestic resource mobilization, to be augmented by financial assistance from the rich countries and regional self-help schemes.

Noting that all the international financial institutions were now committed to a strategy of fighting poverty, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, Ople said that swapping foreign debt for anti-poverty programs will greatly help in domestic resource mobilization.

He said in the past the international community had looked with favor on debt swaps for the environment.

"The Philippines is advocating a more jugular approach, namely, a debt swap against poverty," he said, adding that under this scheme, debts should be forgiven provided the savings are allocated entirely to anti-poverty programs, including micro-financing for small enterprises especially in the countryside. END