Debt campaigners attending this week’s annual meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have expressed disappointment and outrage over the failure of the world’s richest nations to cancel the debt of the world’s poorest nations.
Hopes had been running high last week that finance ministers of the Group of Seven (G-7) industrialized nations would agree on a plan that would provide 100 percent debt relief to nearly three dozen of poor countries, most of them in Africa where cash-strapped governments have been overwhelmed by the HIV -AIDS epidemic, drought, and, most recently, skyrocketing oil prices.
But the G-7, which includes the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, and Japan, could not agree on ways to finance cancellation of the debt, which totals more than US$100 billion, or roughly two thirds of what the U.S. Congress has thus far appropriated for the war in Iraq .
“It is outrageous that the G7 have failed to answer the moral imperative of debt cancellation,†said Marie Clarke, national coordinator of the Jubilee USA Network, a coalition of mainly church-based groups that have been campaigning for debt relief for the past five years.
...The IMF and the Bank, as well as a number of regional multilateral development banks, are owed almost all of the public debt of the world’s poorest nations.
articleHopes had been running high last week that finance ministers of the Group of Seven (G-7) industrialized nations would agree on a plan that would provide 100 percent debt relief to nearly three dozen of poor countries, most of them in Africa where cash-strapped governments have been overwhelmed by the HIV -AIDS epidemic, drought, and, most recently, skyrocketing oil prices.
But the G-7, which includes the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, and Japan, could not agree on ways to finance cancellation of the debt, which totals more than US$100 billion, or roughly two thirds of what the U.S. Congress has thus far appropriated for the war in Iraq .
“It is outrageous that the G7 have failed to answer the moral imperative of debt cancellation,†said Marie Clarke, national coordinator of the Jubilee USA Network, a coalition of mainly church-based groups that have been campaigning for debt relief for the past five years.
...The IMF and the Bank, as well as a number of regional multilateral development banks, are owed almost all of the public debt of the world’s poorest nations.
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for debt relief to ever be agreed upon. Think about it in terms of any bank loans. When was the last time you heard of a bank offering to forgive a debt?
[M]ost HIPC [Heavily Indebted Poor Countries] beneficiaries continue to pay more in debt service each year than they spend on health and education, a situation that debt campaigners argue is morally indefensible, particularly because much of the original debt was incurred by western-backed dictators who misspent or, in some cases, embezzled the money.
And one of the conditions for receiving a loan from the IMF/World Bank is invariably that a country privatize its natural resources. It's a total racket guaranteed to take a poor country, completely devastate it, and siphon off any of its wealth.
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