 We have a lot of concepts and questions. So if you can, can I give the floor to the Minister over there? You have the floor. Thank you very much. I'm going to ask a very simple question. I was a finance educated person actually, but I want to break it down in a very simple manner. As a former decision maker person. My question is what do you mean by economic efficiency? The word came often time, but for me economic efficiency is to be able to be on the market and finance my projects. What I understood is money is not going to flow from what I understood. So my question is do you think as a person who I intend, but I used to deliver for the people who elected me, do I have more chance to going to China and raise money than coming to Europe to do so, considering the fact that I might be in the continent that is wealthy, that can sort of, you can borrow against the wealth that is there, providing that you manage it well and you fight corruption and what have you. So how do you see the China-Europe relationship or even balance to that regard? Because that's the question that is posed to us in Africa. And what do you think or how do you see some alternative funding mechanism for infrastructure financing? As I said, for countries who do have wealth. So that's really my question as a client. That's a very good question indeed. And perhaps my suit could start to respond. Well, I would just say one thing in response now, which is that I think at the moment, it's actually quite hard to get money out of China. If you look at the numbers for Chinese lending, particularly to Africa, they've gone down quite dramatically. I don't have the numbers in my head, but it's like a very dramatic decline in the financing. And the second thing I would say is that some of the emerging markets are still able to access it, but it depends on how robust their own finances are. So anybody who has relatively high debt or has high repayments in the next year is having difficulty accessing the markets, but the others are able to do it. Maybe Jean-Claude will have more market information on this. Jean-Claude, do you want to say a word? No. Let me only mention myself that it's not China vis-à-vis Europe, as far as I understand. It's China on the one hand, vis-à-vis all other, I would say, continent, including the U.S., Europe. And there are two aspects in what we have observed. One is that China has a real problem and creates a real problem when they refuse to take into account that they over indebted some countries, and they don't participate in the system which permits to alleviate the debt. So it's a real issue, and they are having some problems with the Silk Road, Belt and Road that are associated with this. And of course, you still have the African Development Bank, the World Bank, I mean the system, the multilateral system, still there. And of course, what Masoud was saying, in permitting the system to take more risk, capture more, have a leverage with the private sector and have more money for Senegal and for the other African countries is something that we would strongly recommend. But yeah, please. Last word. Because with some people around the table, I have skin in the game. I'm trying to invest in this country, and your question is absolutely legitimate. One of the issues we are facing, and again we're discussing with Jean-Michel, and I'm sure you will add something to this over lunch, as Masoud said, one of the big issues we are facing is that the public system is not up to the expectations full stop. And that's a massive issue. You mentioned risk aversion. I think this is the cracks of the problem. Again, I want to enter into our stories, but I've been personally involved in three or four reports on blended finance. I'm tired of doing reports on blended finance. I mean we know everything which is working. We know all the instruments that should be put at risk. We should just do it, and it's not happening. Again, there are many reasons for that. So I fully support your reason. I fully support the ideas that we need to shake the tree and do. There are instruments, there are resources. We don't need to invent the wheel. That is not the problem. The problem is just to find a way to get there. The question for all of us is who blocks? But we will respond afterwards, because I have five questions. Since you declined the request of the Prime Minister, I'm going to go back by the window, and maybe ask the same question under a different angle. I'm going to start with a very obvious statement, but it's good to make it. If you have one euro or $1 to invest, it's much better to invest it in India to fight climate change than it is in Denmark. That being said, and going back to what Massoud and Pierre said, clearly there is a risk context, is that there is an increasing perception that debt is going to be risky. And so a suggestion maybe for regulators in the context of Basel III and CECA and the equivalent in Europe would be to sort of ring fence this kind of investment separate from the usual EM debt. And recognize the fact that it's such a benefit globally that you could reduce the risk of that investment almost to zero from a CECA perspective. Of course under the proper monitoring, so that that return is understood and the risk is seen as acceptable by the rest of the world. We take this question and you reflect on the response. I'm sorry, I go through the successive question now. You will first to respond. I have a question following the one Prime Minister raised regarding the investments in infrastructure. Actually, my question is for Massoud. Massoud, you mentioned multi-development bank, MDB are required to mobilize the private business to make investment infrastructure. But seems to me by nature, the private business is more risk aversion relative to MDB. So in another way, private business is not good identity to make investment infrastructure. So it seems to me it's kind of for contradiction. So I want to listen your comment on that. Thank you for this very good question. Thank you. So one issue that worries me is that the levels of debt around the world are higher than for the last 200 years. The economist is running a story on this right now. I think very valid. And the big question behind that is how do we think that the interest rates and gross rates will compare to each other over the next decades or so? Although we had this discussion R versus G, until two years or so, people were converging on the view that R star, the equilibrium interest rate is declining, falling below the gross rates that we can sustain and so the high debt levels are not an issue. But I think the three C's that John mentioned, all of them drive up interest rates and drive down gross rates. So how do we deal with these enormous debt levels in the world where they are maybe higher than the C's for longer time periods? What do we do with debt crisis in emerging markets first maybe and then later also in the more mature ones? Yeah. I would say the central bank are not doing what they did in the first old shock and second old shock, namely practicing benign neglect with heavy inflation and then being obliged to catch up dramatically with interest rates at the level of 20% at the beginning of the 80s and not at 5 or 4 as is the case in the US. So fortunately part of the explanation that we do not have this dramatic crisis that we had with the Latin America crisis of this period is perhaps that we have wiser central banks but I stopped there. Jean-Michel? I'm sorry. You too have the floor. In the order that you would prefer. Thank you very much. I would like to answer Prime Minister's tour and make a comment on trade. Actually it's the second year or the third year in a row I think that Africa is experiencing negative net flows to China which is an unprecedented even since for the past 20 years. And it's going to last. It's going to last because China is very slow at restructuring its debt and it's downsizing dramatically the roads and belts initiative for internal domestic fiscal reasons and also the overall debt situation and its stress rate situation. So it's highly unlikely that in the coming five years there will be as open access to Chinese money as it has been in the past let's say 20 years. And of course it's very unfortunate because this is taking place at the moment when because of everything that has been said here about interest rates, et cetera, markets are shifting. Basically it's as we have come to a moment where it's nearly impossible to raise equity for investments in emerging markets and especially for Africa and debt flows have shifted back towards OECD countries in the nutshell. So we are back to a situation where public flows are really the key concern and you can, as Masou already mentioned it, we have to really focus on debt restructuring, debt consolation and here China is the leader. Nothing will be done without their leadership and their acceptance of terms and what Bertrand said about their preeminence in debt stocks. And second of course public institutions, bilateral or multilateral are at the forefront of providing additional money for liquidity concerns or for investments. Yet, and I will stop there on that because we could spend a lot of time on this issue, there's still room open for specific private investments in infrastructure because if you go on a case-by-case basis and if you're able to provide exciting investments with high returns because of the overall liquidity situation you could attract, one could attract specific investors in specific PPPs which require a lot of preparation and framework from governments to make those PPPs credible. But this window is still in my mind open on the private side. And a very short comment on trade. I'm participating, I'm involved in several very capital intensive multinationals. What is very striking for those corporations and their strategies is that beyond everything that Mr. Lipski mentioned and which are completely fully correct there is now a very different beacon in terms of choosing locations of productions. This used to be mainly labor costs which has driven the manufacturing sector and especially the heavy manufacturing sector in Asia. But now the cost of energy and access to a competitive clean energy has become the new beacon because labor costs are not playing the same role as they were before. For technological reasons, robotization is lowering in relative terms the role of labor costs and that having clean energy is really what matters for those AV industries. And this is by the way one of the opportunities for emerging economies including Africa. And the thinking about heavy industry has completely changed and has opened new opportunities for countries which have this type of access and building a competitive advantage which was not absolutely not there 20 or even 10 years ago. Very interesting. I'm sorry because we have the first batch of questions so we stick to the five questions that we have and we see how to respond and then you will be the first to ask the next question but Jean-Claude is the first to address the part of the questions that he wanted to comment on. I just wanted to come back to the question of the former Prime Minister of Senegal in so far as Chinese financing. The problem is not the availability only but the quality and when we look at the Chinese financing we see for instance there has been a financing of a highway in Montenegro. The cost of the road was absolutely outrageous and of course they offered to Montenegro a 30 years financing but that's terrible for Montenegro they don't know how to sort out this story not to mention copper mines in RDC of course and of financing in Africa. So I would very modestly be a little blunt but warn you on Chinese financing. Thank you very much indeed and the remark which was made on China now importing money out of Africa I must confess I didn't know that of course it means that they are repayments on the one hand and new money on the other hand but the algebraic computation would give a negative flow coming from Africa to China. I didn't know that it has to be checked because it's a little bit surprising but thank you very much. So now we have to respond to all the questions which were asked to the speakers so could you raise your hands a lot of questions on trade John, you'll respond. I was going to say a few words on the debt issues and first of all the debt issues are high but of course the issue of how much is too much depends on how much does debt cost and then in this context I think it's critical whether the central banks are successful in reducing inflation so it will reduce long-term interest rates as I put it in the U.S. context for the first time in my memory in my lifetime individuals, households have structured their own financial affairs with the assumption of sustained low inflation and low interest rates and that's why I think it will be very interesting I assume that there in fact is rather broad public support in getting inflation back down again and interest rates if that's the case then the challenge with regard to debt levels will be muted relative to what they would be otherwise and with regard to sovereign debt the, of course before the global financial crisis the Paris Club provided a working process for restructuring sovereign debt and that obviously if there is a working system, a smoothly working system that encourages, that makes it easier for countries to borrow the system is broken right now for reasons that we all understand and the G20 established something called the common framework for debt treatments that has not been anywhere near as successful as anticipated what is happening now it's low profile the IMF and World Bank have jointly established something called the global sovereign debt round table that has brought together in a confidential way not completely confidential there's a public report of their discussions both lenders, borrowers, both private and public and hopefully there's enough of pressure on all sides to make some arrangements that will at least make this process much more much easier just one other thing when we talk about why hasn't more money gone into things like climate change public goods we're working on this at the Bretton Woods committee and think of it in terms of two gaps a public sector gap and a private sector gap what is specifically holding back of debt flows for the private sector there's a lack of price discovery mechanisms for things like lending for climate related projects there's a lack at present of adequate instruments by which you could express that investment and a lack of enforcement mechanisms reliable enforcement mechanisms that mean if you invest in a project how do you know it's really going to produce the results that were expected there was a session on this earlier today that was very interesting I thought for the public sector what are the problems there's a lack of any governance clear governance structure and financing it's each institution doing its own thing there's a lack of governance on implementation for these kinds of projects there's no standardization and similarly there's no independent ex post assessment similarly for the private sector that you know that what you can count on what you did, what you lent actually had the effect that was claimed and it seems to us that until those specific gaps are filled we're not going to have any substantial increase in flows these are preconditions for success there you mentioned the absence of coordination between the bilateral donors is that right? because the multilateral institutions are functioning more or less thank you very much indeed I just want to say one thing about the private investment that you asked and Jean-Michel gave part of the answer to that I would just say one thing that we have to be clear about is to be more realistic about where we expect private flows to go so we're more likely to get private flows into emerging markets and better middle income countries than we are in fragile states so to me it makes less sense to put a lot of official money grants to try and subsidize private sector to attract them to fragile states because you use a lot of grants to get limited amount of private money whereas if you do in middle income countries you can actually get more I think one is just to be a bit more open clear-eyed about that and the other thing is the instruments that they use so for example if they use guarantees they mobilize four times as much private money with guarantees that they do with the loan but the internal incentives for doing guarantees is that it doesn't help the staff to do a guarantee so they like to do loans rather than guarantees now here's something you can change that would have an impact so I think that's just one on private sector the second thing I wanted to respond to was on debt just to pick up one point one is that there are a lot of countries that the IMF has been saying for four years are at high risk of debt distress but there are very few countries that actually default if you look at the number of countries that have defaulted and that's not because they're not under pressure it's because the cost of defaulting in the system we have to fix defaults today is really high for a finance minister so we did some work looking at what happens to their spending what happens is that they keep paying their debt service which is rising sometimes 50% 70% of their revenues but they cut back on education they cut back on health and they cut back on future investment so in effect they're defaulting on the next generation rather than to their external creditors because the cost of doing that is very high and linked to that I would just say the system will not improve for a year or 18 months despite the efforts of this sovereign debt round table it's slow, it's messy it'd be small incremental improvement I personally don't think that 18 months from now we'll have a radically better system and therefore the question truly to me is in this situation how do you help the countries that are under the greatest financial liquidity pressures today rather than hoping that somehow the system is going to get fixed and they're going to have some grand design you know the World Bank is very keen actually on talking about let's have another HIPAAC and you know first of all HIPAAC doesn't make sense for the current structure of creditors and secondly there's no political basis on which the Chinese and the Paris Club creditors will come together in a HIPAAC like format now and therefore we should be focusing our energies rather than on some grand design which is unlikely to come about with the politics being what they are thank you very much indeed Masoud as former president of Paris Club I will serve world but after we have heard all the responses so do we have other speakers please of course Bertrand thank you Jean Claude I wanted to react to Jan's proposition I think what strikes me today is that on the one end we continue to say that there is an emergency and but we don't act as if it was a real emergency we talk about this being urgent we talk about we need to change things and the reality is that it's more of the same so instead of putting 1 billion you put 2 billion and the 2 billion don't move anyway and so I think we we've addressed all the issues etc and again no need to come back on that but I think to face this sense of emergency we should really work on 2 things learning to be a little bit more generous and I think generosity is not necessarily a word that matches well with finance but I think as you say I think this was the words of President Macron in Paris what he means with that not sure but he said we need a shock of concessional finance we need real grant money I mean we don't have I mean we are discussing I mean you can ask the World Bank to lend more but this will add to the debt sink so it's a vicious circle so I think we need to be generous in a way or another we have been capable in a number of countries to subsidize gasoline during the rise of prices and 50 billion in France I mean we could have used this money in a different manner I mean of course it raised political questions etc so generosity and our genuine interest is to move in that direction I think this is important coming back to Jan's point I think we have to be a little bit more innovative in the way we apprehend things I think we will die of doing more of the same forever in the regulatory framework of course there are a number of issues coming back to Senegal I mean depending on whether you are OECD country or not OECD country with the same rating the cost of capital for investment is double with the same rating and the long list of things is like this we know that and we know it's urgent we don't want to enter into the discussion on how to finance gas in Senegal this is a very interesting topic but you have all these issues everywhere and we circle around so I strongly support this type of approach we need to I'm not sure this is the right one but at least to address this we have a global issue which needs to be addressed locally and we need to find the instrument which connects the local and the global to go there if we want to be a little bit practical what could we say that first of all we need China on board goes without saying because it's an anomaly which is very and we should exert maximum pressure or Chinese friends for them to join the international community in a domain where it is in their own interest because it's not their interest to be in freelance in this domain I agree with you of course we need to have as many people on board as possible including obviously China China is the first creditor it's aberrant the other should not do anything because they would work for I think it's a matter of understanding exactly how the problem I discussed with Chinese friends they have a difficulty to understand exactly what is at stake because they have not their own procedure to risk a yield and they prefer to deliver new money and get the payment but anyway let me just of course we need to have China but it shouldn't be an excuse for the EU or the US not to do anything we have said at the G7 who says that they do nothing the EU we do things but we could do way more we have said at the G7 in Germany last year in Elmao we had $100 billion to emerging and developing economies I remember I was with President Macron in Africa and one of the guys there was some people from the civil society say President Macron this is great where is the money it's a fair question of course but if you take the case of France is broke so it's not a very good example no frankly speaking we have magnificent promises but it's a little bit more complicated to get the money out of the budget but please sir I guess many people mentioned the debt China to developing countries I guess some factor we should keep in mind yes China is one of the largest official debt countries but if you look at that situation actually private credit occupy most debt owned by developing countries having said that I'm not going to defend what Chinese government you know from what I heard from some Chinese official what they worry about is if Chinese government involves some debt restriction they worry about the money they give out the debt country will pay back to private credit that's something they a little bit concerned so as someone say we should like John say get it together to have some comprehensive debt restriction the right concept you're absolutely right the right concept is that there is balance of efforts made by all creditors on the one hand and it should be emulated by the same balance of credit on the other hand and the idea was always we understand that it's very difficult for the private sector but then the private sector can compensate with new money there was always if it is not balanced you're absolutely right there is no case nobody will be happy and neither the private nor the public in any of the countries concerned so we have to reconstruct something which would work the public sector in my opinion is up and running but one country is not participant the private sector that's another story and the work that you're doing in the Bretton Woods and the institution concerns that you mentioned is very very important of course John the idea of the sovereign round table is exactly get everybody around the table the situation is everybody is going to have to do something I think the trigger is going to be the debtor countries and as Masuda pointed out basically starving themselves in a way or on a severe diet to avoid trying to restructure because the system is so broken I think they have to put pressure on the lending countries and saying enough is enough you guys have got to get together hopefully that round table will be a context a confidential context in which they can say we all have to participate I hope it's faster than Masud's timetable but Jean Claude very quickly I am very skeptical that China will join the price club for a simple reason they have they own two thirds more than 60% actually of country to country debt and they have very strong convenience I mean very strong bilateral agreements why would they mutualize the risk of all the other creditors at the very beginning there was no such agreement and then progressively all public creditors discovered that if they wanted to get out of the difficulties and help the countries concerned they had to discuss together to be sure that everybody would make the same efforts whatever the confidence and so forth but again it's easy to speak of a government which is not there very easy but I had exactly the same problem in my time with some emerging economies that were creditors and we had arrangement we could solve the problem it is solvable now another problem another problem which is solvable Masud is to change the culture inside the MDBs and the World Bank but yes because if a significant part of the risk can be taken by the public institutions then we are leveraging the private sector please madam yes the country you're talking about I mean I'm part of one of them so actually I think some time it's a it's a dialogue that we and we don't understand ourselves first of all there is no ideology involved in the financing of our economy wherever the money can come from we're looking for it that it has to be very clear and Europeans should not see it as African being pro-Chinese we could be pro-whoever as long as the money comes so that it has to be very clear because it's taking a political sometime turn into it what we are looking forward and Masud thank you for saying that we are the best because when it comes to our debt we just pay to the last penny so that needs to be said it's not like gifts that you know are just delivered and we starve ourselves sometime to do so because we know the cost if you don't do that you don't pay your civil servant and you're out as a government because you have the streets that will take you out so that we do pay but what we are looking forward to is money sitting on the market and we have great plan of developing our industry for instance in Senegal we don't even manufacture needles we import them and that's where the support is expected on a win-win situation because I do believe it's going to be business to business development so I do think that there is a money for that everybody can make money on it so why it's not happening so that's my very question when you go back to some type of ideology because I'm like is there a willingness collectively to support this country to get out of their current situation you ended up doubting it because I don't know because the money is there so if we can sit down and have really a reasonable discussion then we can make it together because I do think Europe needs that you were speaking of public money or private money for the needles well you will always have the public supporting the business to business contract I mean by creating the right environment making sure that justice come along corruption is contained and things like that so that's why I think we don't understand each other most of the time because every time I have this kind of discussion with bankers they have had time understanding where we are coming from and why I raised the China issue if you look into the period the 15 years of collaboration some countries with China they have never been able to raise money to develop the minimum of the infrastructure that's where when China came in that you saw the boom and that's the truth that's what we have seen the real truth in between we had a 500 years relationship with Europe it didn't happen and then you have a 20 or 15 years with China see where the logic is that's really I'm talking to you very bluntly that's how we discuss it among ourselves please look into it I'm saying that because Senegal is going to be a gas country we have one of the huge we think reserved of gas so the question is going to be right there but they will be necessary to have a change in the thinking coming from the banking sector in Europe precisely otherwise we will do business with whoever because we need that but Mrs. Minister we were not saying that China was giving too much money to the country's concern we were on the country realizing perhaps that the flow is in the other direction which is not necessarily the case for your own idea and your own investment but clearly the problem was to have all the countries of the world in order to try to solve the problems the public credit I'm only speaking of public credit in the hands of this concept that you are trying to crystallize but we have specialists of ODA here and I would like very much to hear Mazoud and Jean Michel perhaps how would you comment on what said the Minister of Senegal would you say that if we change the culture of the MDB's then we will find the money including by leveraging the private money for doing what the Minister is asking for I think that will certainly help but I would say there is a bigger problem which is if you look at our ODA I think somebody made the point earlier that we are 200 million roughly give or take of ODA it's gone up in the last four years but all the increase is accounted for by the extra money that we spend on refugees in our own countries here so the largest recipient of Swedish ODA today is Sweden the largest recipient of UK ODA is the UK and that doesn't help secondly it's the money we are putting into Ukraine and so if you look at ODA to Africa it has actually gone down so I would say there is a general point and secondly I would also say now we want to use the same ODA for doing climate finance in middle income countries so we are saying we need to use this ODA to incentivise the middle income countries Indonesia to borrow for coal commissioning decommissioning of coal they need cheaper money so let's choose ODA and they are going to IDA which is the only window that is really focused on poor countries low income countries along with the African bank and they are saying can you find ways to reallocate but half of our ODA goes to middle income countries so why are we not asking how about reallocating the money we already give to middle income countries for less important things than climate change so I think there is that issue the final thing I would just say is all of this conversation falls is one basic issue in my mind which is we need to have straightforward and frank conversations about what we can do and what is feasible and what is not feasible it would be a lot better if we were able to give the money for refugees and cut back on ODA and not pretend that it was ODA it's better to say to countries look we can't do as much ODA as we thought because we have to take care of refugees who have come into our country but it's another to say look at our ODA numbers that have got up and you have to dig and find that actually it's not real I do feel that part of the problem we have now is this trust issue which comes from not having a frank and clear dialogue very clear Jean-Michel yes very quickly I think we are experiencing quite a negative time for financing Africa and external imbalances we have talked about ODA and it's correct to say that in the past three years ODA in absolute volumes has declined remittances have declined because of the overall macroeconomic situation in Europe in Canada in the US etc China has reduced massively its lending for the reasons that we have already mentioned and on top of it China has now experienced increased balance of payment problems commercial deficits problems of all the continent has increased its commercial deficits so it's a complicated period and there's a need for a big change if one wants to see that changing of course this is a broad assessment about the continent country by country it's different not all countries are in the same situation and obviously the ones that are in the most difficult situations are the ones which are owing most money to China big oil and mineral producers because this is there that Chinese money is concentrated actually Chinese money is not at all distributed even across Africa but massively concentrated on around 5, 6 countries that are specificity so we have to address that and as far as the MDB but also the bilateral ODA is concerned we have a major issue to solve on both sides which is the issue of conditionality this is the one which has been the most contentious how is it run what is it under conditionality macro, micro, etc this is the poison in the ODA pill which is preventing money to flow faster and to reach the basic needs of the countries and everybody has a problem there but the MDBs particularly the prime minister has the flow please you will have the flow immediately after thank you chair first I think it was important that Aminata creates a bit of emotion on the situation of Africa and other emerging markets but I concur with Jean-Michel Africa is in a credit crunch is in a critic crunch which is in a sense worse than what happened in 2009 for instance it's a real real crisis with a sort of pandemic situation where when you have a default of a country it has an effect on countries absolutely in a deeply different situation the fact that Ghana is in default has a paradoxical immediate impact on the very coast and so on and so forth even if the situations are very very different but to be constructive maybe one or two comments to attract the private sector we can easily put a few tools on the table we know how to ensure the risk we know how to buy and sell the risks it's not technically that difficult in the World Bank Group Miga really it's quite an easy decision sort of more efficient tool an essential tool we know how to develop the guarantee funds I mean it's not rocket science we have a lot of experience so I think that treating addressing the risks professionally really quite simple second Bertrand said something very real apart from the funding of climate change of social goals in development I mean we have a problem of being able to absorb what has been collected in terms of funds and Bertrand is right when he says it's very difficult for the emerging countries and the developing countries to be able easily professionally to absorb take the forestry for instance forestry you can find business models to invest there to get the carbon credits and to have a very positive impact on the planet ok but we have not the tax environment we have not the concession legal system efficient in every country if you take the Basin du Congo the Congo river system you have an immense potential and a very very little number of projects so even when we have and if we were able to attract more private finance with the proper risk and insurance environment we have to support the absorption of those funds is it the domestic legislation that you put into question I mean the countries are very in equal positions you could say that Gabon is a bit more advanced or Ivory Coast South Africa but we can improve that quite easily look at what is done in terms of extractive industries contracts I mean support by the World Bank by the African Development Bank in order to optimize or normalize that we can do that the facility to be financing for legal professionalism the grounds by the African Development Bank we have made huge progress in terms of due diligence and execution and contractual systems for the governments through grants I mean we can easily technically support cheap ways for the environment the business environment to progress because as of today it's maybe the worst sort of obstacle when Bertrand says blended finance is very difficult to implement and make efficient I mean it's a daily experience for the private sector to have no efficient and professional interface but it's cheap and simple and look at the privatization it was a huge transfer of asset ownership huge historical in Africa in the late 90s it has been supported by for instance the World Bank Group in terms of professional support grants and financing for the processes to be efficient so it's cheap to improve the systems but the processes are quite important I mean the actual real processes and on that we can make fast progress thank you very much because you introduce an element of dynamism in the capacity to get out of the difficulties thank you very much please you have the floor that might be the last question and then we will have a wrap up with the speakers please thank you so Nicolas Puyo I'm an investor in private equity and I've been an investor in energy for 23 years basically I will expand on Madam Prime Minister question and just maybe a quick addition to Mr Mayor's point on Montenegro because I think it's actually quite important not only is it expensive but what we need to understand in the loan agreement granted by the Chinese it prevents Montenegro to go to another another debt provider typically Europe because they are forbidden to actually reimburse that loan because in this case if they default there is a provision by which the Chinese can actually grab a piece of land of Montenegro and in that matter it is the support of I don't remember if it's Qatar or a Brugilla but I think we need to really understand for having worked with CIC for quite some time they know their contracts upside down and there is no clause that is made at random and so I think that the example you're mentioning is super important because it was true of the Gaboron coal plant in Bostuan it was true of a number of infrastructures in the world and I think we need to understand that it does not come cheap it may seem cheap on the pricing issue but it certainly does not come cheap with the structures that you've mentioned the point that I would like to expand on and the question which is maybe a bit provocative is I'm wondering in the end if our financial system is not fairly obsolete because I think the point that Madam Prime Minister is raising is capital allocation you were talking about the building pretty well today well the reality is out of the 3.4 trillion that were added by the MSCI in 2023 4 trillion comes from the magnificent 7 so the Amazons the Microsofts the NVIDIAs etc which means that all the rest is actually has actually destroyed value on the stock market and these stocks added 4 trillion for a stock market that added 3.4 trillion and I see that in my own world and I think it goes back to my Prime Minister issue today it's very easy to raise 200 million on a pre-seed round on AI 200 million for a pre-product pre-revenue, pre-idea and it's very hard to finance projects in developing countries one reason is because the risk aversion and I fully agree with Mr. Ahmed it's not only the public sector it's the private sector and the private sector far prefers adding another round of financing of chat GPT or open AI or whatever rather than investing in the real stuff that we should be investing in because externalities are not priced in in our financial system very good remark of course and to think that there is no risk associated with investing massively in startups is also a fantasy so we are but okay the system has to be fixed in many many respects that's clear so it was a very stimulating and interesting exchange of views the government of China was not there so but thank you very much for all your remarks it was very very well done so can I ask the speakers whether they have a last remark I think we had positives and negatives not only negatives in the exchange of views and we we know that we can perhaps particularly I have to say in the MDB's institution public framework taking more risk and leveraging much more private capital that is certainly one positive in the at least coming out of our discussion but the world remains extremely demanding that's clear so I go in the reverse order I hope that the rates will go down because it's absolutely obscene to have rates of 10% for Ivory Coast or for Senegal right now it's obscene it's impossible we cannot advise a government to raise euro bonds with 10% interest rates and we are exporting from developed countries our diseases Covid inflation, high interest rates but higher interest rates but this higher interest rates will permit us to get back to price stability which is good for everybody so I mentioned that only I think all the investors are focusing on so called ESG performance of companies I think they should rather look at what they do for developing countries and what they do for Africa and do meaningful things rather than worry about ESG you don't like ESG really what why not my neighbors are very shocked actually well I'm not an expert in developing finance but just one word about Paris Club don't forget there was a process called London Club as well along with Paris Club as far as private debt risk scheduling concerned Bill Rose always chairman of London Club negotiation usually took place in New York but it's labeled London Club anyway and along with public debt risk scheduling under the auspices of Paris Club Jean Claude was chairman for a long time ago three decades ago I think London Club approach happened and usually you know at the Winx and Arm Twisting center banks of the same countries and have them go along with Paris Club official debt risk scheduling that's what happened actually a few years ago so Chinese concern about the possibility that the public money bail out go into private sector that didn't happen that way because of the London Club approach thank you it was easier at the time because we had banks and not I would say banks I just say one thing in defense of if you look at the contracts we actually at CGD we did a detailed study of looking at the contracts that were done for individual loans that were made by Chinese bank it's true that some of them actually had exactly the kinds of constraint but I think you see now a learning process over time so I do feel that the more recent loans that were being made were more aligned with what are the international norms because it's a learning process that I think all creditors went through and the other thing I would say you know Larry Summers is the chair of CGD and he made one comment when he said you know when we go talk to a finance minister from Africa the Chinese offer him expensive financing and we offer him a lecture and at the end of the day no matter how wise our lecture it doesn't compete with the financing so I think we just have to bear in mind as to what is the alternative offer that you're putting on the table thank you very much indeed Bertrand thank you I would just refer to the summit I mentioned which happened in Paris in June we can discuss whether it was a success or not but I think the intuition was right what we need is to find the terms of a new global financing pact not just a new Bretton Woods but a new way to address these issues and I remember I asked Thomas Booberl is the CEO of AXA to come on stage and what he said strikes me he said what we need to bring in the conversation is a word together just simply together because everybody is in his lane everybody say I'm right I know what I want to do I know what I need etc but we don't talk to each other we don't really work together I mean we see that at every level and so I think this new pact which I expect might take a number of years will not be decided by one country one institution etc and it's difficult because as we've discussed there are a lot of centrifugal forces that basically break the together approach but for me this is critical we need to find ways to work together thank you so I basically agree with it shows that development finance is at the core of today's problems and I agree with that there is a short-term urgency but I hope that we won't stop at a short-term because we are going to have a succession of short-term emergencies in the future as we did in the recent past as well I would also agree that it's a coordination problem doing it together indeed and it's not only a public problem I think the Paris club was extraordinarily successful for the public side but it took years to join forces with the private sector and I hope that the round table will be able to actually associate all this and that it will be more than a crisis management mechanism that it can be actually a framework for future debt contract as well and what worries me is that we are still thinking in terms of crisis management while there is a major pathology of the financial system that needs to be addressed one word on risk aversion I think it's built in and I was struck when I was at AFD that we were spending so much time trying to actually decrease the risk of our investments while development finance is about risk taking and there is no alternative because you can't go to your parliament with taxpayers' money and oh this is what we did with your money and we took risks no you have to go to them we make sure that what we finance is risk less because if not you won't get any money for future ODA so it's a big contradiction there there are ways to think about it to create a set aside fund to take risks for example and it's openly mentioned as that but it's something that requires innovation and discussion one final word on efficiency and I think it may be provocative but I think the way we define efficiency including now doesn't take into account all the discussions about externalities climate change environment and so on I'm not sure that trade is efficient in many cases where transport costs are undervalued and that the price of transport doesn't reflect the social cost for example so I will be careful about mentioning efficiency without redefining what we mean by it because we are in a situation in which we need to understand better when things are efficient not only from sheer economic current perspective but including all the climate externalities you are criticizing the price system in which the market economy function of course John I guess I get the pen ultimate word the final word will be the chairman but let me try to end on a more upbeat note the consensus is that global growth is going to be sustained and a year and a half ago the consensus was we were headed for a recession and it looks like we avoided a recession we are bringing inflation down and not that long ago there was concern that this process was also going to involve a financial crisis when the the Silicon Valley bank failed and it looks like that's not happening so if that's the case and we can look forward to 2024 and beyond sustained growth back to low inflation and greater confidence in the stability of the financial sector despite risks that's not a bad outcome and that's probably a positive environment for starting to think constructively about addressing these kind of big problems Thank you very much indeed John so I conclude first of all in thanking the speakers because they stick to what had been the role concentrate on a few issues I know that we had no speaker and no discussion on the next financial crisis which is looming on the contrary we could see that we could cope with this start of difficulty in Credit Suisse and in the US regional bank I don't exclude frankly speaking that we could have big problems in the non-bank financial intermediation and anything can still happen particularly if interest rates remain at a high level obviously and it is exactly what the central banks are telling us, longer for longer, high for longer or higher for longer even if in my opinion they succeeded extremely well in trying to regain control but on the non-bank which is not I would say under the prudentials of the banks anything can still happen I am struck and very impressed by the fact that we discussed development development aid financing with private funds the development I have to thank the minister because Madame you draw our attention on that and it had an echo which was overwhelming we all discussed that thank you also for all the questioner so I think that if I had to conclude with a few words I would say we are relatively confident at this stage despite the abominable tensions that we have to cope with, geo-strategic tensions we know that a lot of surprises, unfortunate surprises can come and that we have to be prepared for everything and we prove that at least in the banking sector with what I just mentioned because the reaction of the authorities was extraordinary rapid both in the US and in Europe, in Switzerland and rapidity of reaction is absolutely of the essence if we have new teasing coming from here and there but again I take the sentiment that we should guard ourselves of being too confident or too optimistic if I may that being said thank you so much for all what you have done in participating actively in this workshop, thank you very much thank you