NEW YORK - The United Nations yesterday issued a sweeping list of proposals to help the world's poorest nations cope with the effects of globalization, including an idea for a global tax on international currency transactions.
A 0.1 percent tax on $1.5 trillion worth of "speculative" currency transactions could yield $150 billion a year that could be used to stabilize volatile markets, said the report, compiled in collaboration with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and others.
...
"We have not recommended any such thing," Nitin Desai, the U.N. undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs, said of the global tax, which is presented in paragraph 113 of the 64-page report and touted in its press kit.
Instead, he said, "It's one of the areas where the report is not clearly making an explicit recommendation but simply saying that someone has said, 'Think about it.' "
He declined to elaborate on how such a tax would be collected, administered or disbursed. Nor would he say whether U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan would endorse such a measure.
Reinhard Munzberg, the U.N. representative for the International Monetary Fund, and Enrique Rueda-Sabater, a World Bank senior manager, also pointedly refused to endorse the suggestion, which apparently was offered by nongovernmental organizations and unnamed member states.
...
Last year, the authors of the U.N. Development Program's annual Human Development Report suggested a special tax on Internet commerce and messages. The suggestion - presented in less than a sentence - overshadowed the massive evaluation of human rights.
Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali derailed his hopes for a second term, in part, by suggesting in the mid-1990s that the United Nations raise funds by taxing international airline tickets. Largely because of that, the U.S. Congress made payment of $100 million in U.N. funds contingent on the organization's promise not to try to levy its own taxes.
"Among [private nonprofit organizations] there is a strong sympathy for a measure of this kind," said Danish Ambassador Jorgen Bojer. He said his own government was mildly interested in the idea but had decided it was not worth the political effort to pursue it.
