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King Mohammed VI Calls for Intangible Capital to Be Criteria for Measuring Wealth, Rating Nations [All Africa]

Morocco’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly focused on working to better understanding the true value of emerging economies:

AllAfricaKing Mohammed VI has called for intangible capital to be one of the primary criteria for measuring wealth and rating nations.

The rating and classification of countries – according to current standards – raises a number of questions, the Sovereign said in speech before the 69th session of the UN General Assembly, read out by Government Chief Abdelilah Benkirane, adding that the rating process has shown not only its limits, but also how far removed it is from the reality of the countries of the South and how incapable it is of giving an objective account of the level of human development achieved by these countries.

Referring to World Bank studies, the Monarch notes that intangible capital takes into consideration a series of factors related to the living conditions of the population, such as security, stability, human resources, institutional development and the quality of life and of the environment, all of which are elements that have a major impact on crafting public policies.

For the King, the evolution of countries should not be governed by any rating or classification; instead, it should be viewed as a historical process based on the positive experiences of each country; similarly, each country’s characteristics should be respected.

In this respect, the Sovereign called for doing justice to the countries of the South by reconsidering the way they are dealt with and supporting them in their gradual march towards progress, reiterating that Africa does not need humanitarian aid as much as it needs mutually beneficial partnerships.

In the same vein, the King stressed that Africa needed to turn the page on the past and overcome its political, economic and social problems – that it needed to rely on its own resources to achieve its development, underlining that this is exactly what Morocco has sought to accomplish through a series of important agreements signed with a number of African sister nations.

For the Sovereign, this is an “outstanding model of South-South cooperation which reflects our capacity as African countries to develop the continent by relying on ourselves and investing in the natural resources of our countries”.

The King added that achieving development does not merely hinge on a set of projects and on funding; nor is underdevelopment synonymous with the countries of the South, and the problem has nothing to do with the attributes and skills of Africans, who have proven their ability to produce and create whenever the right conditions were met, and whenever they managed to rid themselves of the oppressive legacy of colonialism.

The development issue in Africa has little to do with the nature of the land or the weather, as harsh as they may be in some parts of the continent, but it is more closely related to deep-rooted economic dependence, the lack of support and funding and the absence of a sustainable development model, the Monarch underlined.

The Sovereign affirmed that providing aid to these countries is not an option or an act of generosity as much as a necessity and a duty. “What peoples really need, though, is fruitful cooperation grounded in mutual respect”, he stressed.

For the King, the right conditions need to be created, in theory and in practice, to move on to the next stage with regard to promoting both democracy and development, without interference in the internal affairs of states. In return, the latter should commit to good governance…[Original Story]

 

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