High deficits will inevitably lead to higher interest rates and exchange rates, capital leaving the country and higher taxes in the future.

4. Calls for supervisory authorities to closely monitor the funding and liquidity risks resulting from foreign currency lending, to take action to prevent excessive risks and to require financial institutions to have effective pricing, capital allocation and liquidity management systems to deal with foreign currency lending and to take account of the consumer’s ability to withstand fluctuations ...[+++] in the exchange rate when assessing the consumer’s creditworthiness; calls for Member States to require financial institutions to allow consumers to convert the loan into an alternative currency, in accordance with a transparent method disclosed to the consumer in pre-contractual information, and for financial institutions to provide a foreign exchange hedging facility at reasonable cost to consumers to limit the risk of adverse currency movement on repayments;

33. Supports the call by the UN Secretary-General at the 2005 High Level Dialogue on Finance for Development to redefine debt sustainability as the level of debt that allows a country to achieve the MDGs by 2015 without an increase in debt ratios, which requires greater complementarity between debt relief and outstanding development financing requirements; regrets therefore that in the new Debt Sustainability Framework for Low-Income Countries approved in April 2005, the IMF continues to define debt sustainability essentially in terms of export ratios (which is an unreliable predictor of debt sustainability for countries characterised b ...[+++]y an extreme vulnerability to shock and steep fluctuations in export earnings), that it lacks realistic assessments of vulnerability and that there is no systematic analysis linking the benefits of the HIPC Initiative and the extra funds needed to achieve the MDGs;

5. Supports the call by the UN Secretary-General at the 2005 High Level Dialogue on Finance for Development to redefine debt sustainability as the level of debt that allows a country to achieve the MDGs by 2015 without an increase in debt ratios, which requires greater complementarity between debt relief and outstanding development financing requirements; regrets therefore that in the new Debt Sustainability Framework for Low-Income Countries approved in April 2005, the IMF continues to define debt sustainability essentially in terms of export ratios (which is an unreliable predictor of debt sustainability for countries characterised by ...[+++] an extreme vulnerability to shock and steep fluctuations in export earnings), that it lacks realistic assessments of vulnerability and that there is no systematic analysis linking the benefits of the Debt Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (the HIPC initiative) and the extra funds needed to achieve the MDGs;