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What are the Strings Attached to Debt Relief?
According to Cut the Strings!, a report released by Jubilee Debt Campaign (UK) in September 2006: - The countries going through HIPC have to meet between 10 and 20 direct conditions in order to get debt relief, some of which require compliance with other programs which themselves come with at least as many conditions again.
- Many conditions require countries to implement controversial policies regardless of the views of citizens, parliaments or even governments. Gambia is being made to privatize an industry its government had already privatized before and chosen to renationalize.
- Privatization is frequently forced through by debt conditions, often with disastrous consequences. Of the countries going through HIPC now, Burundi, Chad, Gambia, S„o TomÈ and PrÌncipe and Sierra Leone have all been told to privatize as a condition of debt cancellation.
- Inflexible and excessively burdensome conditions are causing appalling delays in delivering urgently-needed debt cancellation. More than half the countries still going through HIPC in September 2006 entered the scheme more than five years ago.
- The seven countries going through HIPC that entered more than a year ago have, since entering, given $1.5 billion in debt payments to the rich world. All but one have had to spend more on debt service than on health.
- Most countries going through HIPC have had debt relief suspended since they entered because of failure to meet IMF economic targets which leading economists consider misguided, unnecessary and frequently harmful.
Download more information on the strings attached to debt relief:
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