Today’s news is of course welcome news for everyone who cares about poverty in the third world, but going back to my Evo Morales post during the week, this policy will only really bring the benefits it could do if it is combined with a systematic drive to change the demographic profile of these countries, and this means, as well as writing-off debt, more expenditure on health and on education (and in particular on equality of opportunity female education). Really, what I think has been wrong with the IMF approach in the past has been a ‘one ring to fit them all’ policy. What we can see I think now is that this is inadequate: we need a two speed globalisation. One speed for the countries like Argentina, Chile, Turkey, Thailand etc, which are on the ramp and ready to take off, and another for those countries which need help with social spending (in order not to provoke an explosion in the political subsystem) while they get the demographic imbalances straighter. So we need a debt-pardoning-plus approach.

The International Monetary Fund’s board on Wednesday approved 100 per cent debt relief on $3.3bn owed to the fund by 19 of the world’s poorest countries.

In a statement issued after the board meeting, Rodrigo Rato, managing director, said: “This is an historic moment, which will allow these countries to increase spending in priority areas to reduce poverty, promote growth and to make progress towards achieving the millennium development goals.”