The forum of the "poor" which is being held in Sikasso, Mali, has reproached the G8 countries for not honoring their commitments to world's poorest countries and for failing to resolve the "structural crisis related to indebtedness," according to the African Press Agency (APA).

If the G8 commitments to poor countries in Africa and Latin America facilitated the cancellation of an "insignificant amount" of debt totaling 39 billion U.S. dollars in 2005, the problem of indebtedness caught up with these countries shortly after this reduction, according to the APA.

Today, the total amount of debt owed by African countries stands at 215 billion U.S. dollars while that of Latin America is estimated to be 723.6 billion U.S. dollars, forum participants said Thursday.

According to them, currently, debt repayments by world's poorest countries stands at 100 millions U.S. dollars per day, with the total amount of debt owed by these countries being an " incredible level of " 2,800 billion U.S. dollars.

In fact, the participants are saying the responses formulated by the G8 were "mere announcements" which were never followed through, according to the same source.

As proof of this, the participants pointed out that the situation of poor countries had not improved since the Heavily Indebted Countries initiative was launched in Cologne, Germany, in 1999.

As a way of resolving the present crisis, the forum of the " poor" is calling for the "total and unconditional cancellation" of the external debts of all third world countries, the dissolution of both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank and the establishment of the "Bank of the South."

The bank will bring together all the developing and emerging countries in a bid to promote sustainable development founded on the basis of "complementary and fair economic relations," the participants said.

Source: Xinhua