MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lula da Silva criticizes G8 summit; calls for BRIC participation

The Brazilian president has become the spokesperson for developing nations

Rich countries are not living up to their pledges to help developing countries weather the effects of the global economic crisis said Brazilian president Lula da Silva, ahead of this week’s G8 meeting in Italy.

“I am seeing little being done by the rich countries in the help they are supposed to give,” Lula da Silva said on his weekly radio broadcast.

Brazil, one of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) has argued that the G8 group of industrial nations and the main developing economies is “outdated” and does represent today’s world. A more suitable forum to address the global financial crisis could be the G20, Lula da Silva has repeated.

“The big forum for economic questions should be the G20” said Lula da Silva. “The truth is that the situation is so complicated that today it is very difficult for the rich countries to take a position that does not take into account BRIC countries”.

The G20 group of nations, which includes leading emerging markets, including BRIC members, agreed in London in April to triple the resources of the IMF to 750 billion US dollars to help cushion the impact on countries from the economic crisis.

The summit also set a target to more than double lending to the world's poorest countries and said additional resources for them would be raised through already agreed IMF gold sales.

“We need to demand the things we agreed that the International Monetary Fund would do and that the World Bank would do, and I think this meeting is extremely important” said Lula da Silva, who is currently visiting France.

Lula da Silva has also accused rich countries of causing the global crisis and forcing poor nations into hardship. Ahead of April's summit, he blamed “white people with blue-eyes” for irrational behaviour that set off the financial crisis last year.

Italy has invited 40 nations and organizations, representing 90% of the world economy, to next week's G8 summit in a bid to make the Group of Eight more relevant as world economic power shifts to include large developing nations like Brazil, China and India.