Archbishop criticises ‘scandal’ of global economy

The Archbishop of Canterbury has criticised the current global economy, calling it a scandal.

In a speech at St Paul’s Cathedral to mark the 60th anniversary of the Christian Aid charity, Dr Rowan Williams said that the global economy “leaves children dying and over a billion in extreme need”.

Dr Williams said: “It reinforces the assumption that trust is not possible and mutual; it reinforces a picture of the world in which rivalry or mutual isolation are the obvious forms of behaviour. The rich protect their markets while talking about the virtues of free trade. Global agencies have often held up sustainable economic growth in poor countries by insisting that it can only be allowed to develop in the way they dictate.”

The Archbishop said that debt repayment in poorer countries had “constantly distorted the possibilities of stability, let alone growth”. He said: “The transparency and democracy so desperately needed in many disadvantaged nations are not likely to develop on such soil.”

In his sermon, Dr Williams talked about free trade and said: “Universal trade liberalisation may offer fresh markets and promise overall increases in wealth. It also forces choices on vulnerable countries, whose effects may be - in the short to medium term – very costly indeed to a whole generation of workers to the environment to political stability.”

The Archbishop said that statistics in a number of economic surveys had shown a “spectacular increase” in national wealth, alongside a reality of instability, increasing poverty in many areas and a loss of social cohesion.

Dr Williams said: “The challenge that has to be put to a naïve confidence in free trade to deliver a flourishing human environment is a challenge about what is needed for a country to play the part it wants and needs to play in the global economy, what is needed to give it appropriate economic power. And the answer is unlikely to be a simple recommendation for a universal and instant end to protection of preference.

“Do we want to live in a world where trust seems natural? That is the question we need to be looking at today, as believers and as citizens.”

The Archbishop’s comments come as Christian Aid launched a ‘Trade Justice’ Campaign, which includes demands for an end to the EU’s free-trade agreements with former colonies as well as an end to export subsidies, which the charity says has a “devastating” impact on the markets of developing countries.

(KMcA/SP)