Cutting the burden of Africa's debt

Need for broader external debt relief

Debt relief may help Madagascar protect its biodiversity.

The Group of Eight initiatives on debt relief and on Africa are important contributions.

It does, however, require more than just international aid or debt relief.

We also believe that official development assistance should be combined with debt relief.

The amount of debt relief would then be determined on the basis of expected development assistance and the need to avoid a new debt overhang.

This steady flow of debt relief is allowing US consumer spending to recover slowly.

Action on debt relief vital because it provides the certainty needed to hire the doctors and the teachers, and to buy the drugs.

Debt relief, trade reform and development aid are all vital, but none of them can work alone.

(d) Debt burden

Action on debt relief and trade reform to benefit low income countries should also reflect the Millennium Development Goals.

Finally, the representative called for a realistic response to the issue of debt relief and welcomed the initiative taken at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles.

Debt relief

Debt relief, debt swaps or debt cancellation could offer important means for mobilizing resources for accelerating progress towards the water and sanitation goals.

We urge all creditors to support the call for intensified debt relief, without jeopardizing the long term viability of the international financial institutions.

The report calls for a major scaling up of investments in development, as well as for stronger and more effective international action on debt relief, trade and science and technology.

The African Development Bank Group also announced that Burundi had met the conditions needed to qualify for over US  226 million in debt relief.

Later, some investors feared that governments would unleash inflation to ease the burden of soaring public debt and address persistent unemployment.

In addition to favouring an increase in aid, Slovakia also supports further reform of trade relations as well as debt relief for poor countries.

Reflecting on the G8's recent decision to cancel the multilateral debt of several poor countries, he recalled UNCTAD's pioneering role in advocating debt relief as an essential condition for overcoming the poverty trap .

The Threat of Greek Debt Relief

UNCTAD could contribute, within its mandate, to the enrichment of discussions on debt relief and assistance for developing countries in the context of a development oriented solution that would link various debt relief alternatives to national development plans and to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

Equally worrying is Africa's unsustainable debt burden.

The burden of external indebtedness is one of the most serious obstacles to progress.

The current debt relief measures have been far from effective.

In view of the Under Secretary General's references to the importance attached to debt relief by the Bretton Woods institutions and some Summit participants, the delegation of Barbados would welcome the views of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs regarding helping some of the countries concerned to deal with their increasing debt burden.

Greece needs more debt relief.

The number and scope of conditions attached to certain types of assistance should be made less onerous on recipient countries.

Debt relief, particularly for the highly indebted poorest countries, in the framework of the relevant initiative of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, is an important source of resource mobilization for the attainment of the development goals and the solution of social problems.

(e) To reduce the unsustainable debt burden of developing countries through such actions as debt relief and, as appropriate, debt cancellation and other innovative mechanisms geared to comprehensively addressing the debt problems of developing countries, in particular the poorest and most heavily indebted ones

(e) To reduce the unsustainable debt burden of developing countries through such actions as debt relief and, as appropriate, debt cancellation and other innovative mechanisms geared to comprehensively addressing the debt problems of developing countries, in particular the poorest and most heavily indebted ones

Achievement of the MDGs in a sustained manner, leading to real economic transformation, is hardly possible without more and effective debt relief, a fundamental reform of international economic and monetary institutions and a successful realization of the development agenda of the Doha round.

Further stresses that the economic programmes arising from foreign debt relief and cancellation must not reproduce past structural adjustment policies that have not worked, such as dogmatic demands for privatization and reduced public services

7. Emphasizes in this regard that debt relief does not replace other sources of financing

Consider the belief that the more the government borrows, the higher the future tax burden will be.

His delegation therefore supported the application of the debt burden adjustment based on the debt stock approach.

The debt burden adjustment must continue to be applied as a mark of the international community's solidarity with countries burdened by debt, particularly LDCs.

It is lobbying the troika for further debt relief.

Urgent consideration needed to be given to providing significant debt relief or restructuring for low and middle income developing countries that were not covered by the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative and whose debt burden was unsustainable.

The bigger issue is the debt overhang that has forced European governments to pursue this course.

21. Stresses that debt relief should contribute to development objectives, including poverty reduction, and in this regard urges countries to direct those resources freed through debt relief, in particular through debt cancellation and reduction, towards these objectives

Recently agreed initiatives, such as the decision by the European Union to double its ODA by 2010 and to reach the 0.7 per cent ODA target by 2015, as well as the G8 debt relief initiatives, were commended.

This would also contribute to alleviating the heavy agenda of the legislative and expert reviewing bodies.

Accordingly, he called for increases in aid, debt relief, and deepening of preferential market arrangements to decrease poverty.