UN General Assembly
1995

obtain favourable treatment in conditions for repayment. Gabon effectively devotes more than half of its annual budget to debt repayment, thereby crippling its development efforts — this in spite of the fact that the machinery for debt reduction advocated in recent years has discriminated against us by excluding us from the list of beneficiaries. We suggest that the reason given, based on the high per capita gross national product, is unfair. This strange singling out of Gabon, which is still almost the only country in the so-called middle-income category in the southern Sahara, is not justified in reality. This situation places a burden on our economy and thereby affects our economic relations abroad. This appeal to the international community for fairer treatment of my country is not a case of begging — no more for Gabon than for the rest of Africa — because, as Omar Bongo stated at the Copenhagen summit: “Africa is not asking for charity”. In reality, helping our credibility and viability in economic and financial terms, actually strengthens the