Fast Track for Wall Street Debt Relief, Slow Lane for Liberia, Haiti

October 10th, 2008

Campaigners call for World Bank to call off ‘outrageous’ postponement of promised debt relief

WASHINGTON, DC and LONDON — International debt campaigners today called on rich country finance ministers meeting at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings in Washington DC to end the outrageous delays to debt relief for Haiti and Liberia – two of the poorest countries in the world.

They are calling on rich country governments to act with the same urgency in tackling the food crisis and global poverty as they have with the banking crisis in recent weeks. Campaigners point out that the ‘emergency bailout’ for big banks has been fast-tracked, while two countries on the receiving end of the impacts of the food and financial crises – Haiti and Liberia – are facing new delays to debt relief that has been long promised.

A new report on the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries debt relief initiative produced for the annual meetings has announced that the likely date for Haiti to receive debt relief has been put back six months from ‘last quarter 2008′ to ‘first half 2009′ [1]. Meanwhile Liberia, which spent two years, while recovering from civil war, waiting for donors to agree how to clear its arrears so it could even ‘qualify’ for debt relief, is being told not to expect any until 2010.

Neil Watkins, National Coordinator of Jubilee USA Network, said: “After four hurricanes in a month and an escalating food crisis it is outrageous that Haiti is being told it must wait six more months for debt relief. This is like Hank Paulson telling Wall Street he will get back to them in the New Year.”

“Haiti has been dealing with multiple crises in recent months. As a result it is still spending $1 million a week on debt service while its people starve. As we’ve seen this month, when Wall Street bankers are affected, they get fast tracked for debt relief. But the people of Haiti don’t seem to matter very much in Washington. Haiti needs the immediate debt cancellation of its illegitimate debt that it has long been promised now,” said Watkins.

Nick Dearden, Director of Jubilee Debt Campaign UK, said: “Liberia has a large, illegitimate commercial debt burden and both the government and its creditors are ready to make a deal via the Debt Reduction Facility, but are being held up by delays in the World Bank bureaucracy. The people working on the DRF should stop crisis-watching on CNN and get on with releasing funds that will save people’s lives.”

“Liberia is on the front line of the global food crisis, and yet it is still being told it must wait until 2010 for debt relief to be delivered. In such a rapidly-changing world, the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative is increasingly looking like an outdated process. It’s time for an urgent injection of political will to get some liquidity back into debt cancellation, and bail out the world’s poor from a mess they had no part in creating,” said Dearden.

###

[1] Haiti’s likely completion date for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s debt cancellation scheme, has been put back from ‘last quarter 2008′ to ‘first half 2009′ – a delay of up to six months. See Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative: Status of Implementation report, World Bank and International Monetary Fund, 12 September 2008.

For more information, see Jubilee USA and Jubilee Debt Campaign, UK

Return to Top