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

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

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

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

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

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.

For donor countries, issues included increased official development assistance (ODA), deeper debt relief and improved trade conditions.

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

Moreover, it was pointed out that draft principle 4 had not fully achieved the objective of reducing the victim's burden of proof.

Debt relief for the countries of the region remains a major focus of our assistance to Africa, including through the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Debt Initiative.

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.

It also believed that the core countries would relieve the ECB burden of mounting bailout costs.

Another important step forward was the finalization of the debt relief plan for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC).

And, as I suggested above, all schemes aimed at easing the burden of work and increasing the amount of leisure risk falling victim to our genius for conjuring up new disasters.

We believe that the country can be set on a sustained growth path through increased development assistance, as well as debt relief, to supplement our efforts.

Another breakthrough was the debt relief for HIPC countries agreed at the annual meetings of the Bretton Woods institutions.

By serving as a clearinghouse for administrative issues, for example, political coordinators could greatly ease the Council's formal workload.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Debt relief initiatives should be additional to ODA resources for development purposes and should be all encompassing, so that all heavily indebted developing countries can benefit appropriately.

China s Burden

There is also a concern that the Initiative provides for only a modest relaxation of a Government's budget constraints, as under the main provisions of the Initiative a Government may simply swap one type of spending commitment for another of equal value,15 although debt relief has contributed to an increase in social spending.

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.

Of course, the millions of personal bankruptcies and home foreclosures in the US are not popular, but they provide debt relief each time, thereby enabling households to make a fresh start.

For that reason, the CARICOM States supported meaningful and speedy debt relief, free and fair trade, special and differential treatment, and comprehensive initiatives in favour of sustainable development such as the New Partnership for Africa's Development.

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.

NEPAD will monitor the implementation of the initiative and continue to call for the extension of debt relief to all least developed countries in Africa and for similar bold actions with regard to the trade distorting agricultural subsidies of developed countries.

(d) Debt burden

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

Delegating and streamlining the workload

Debt relief

One key idea was to lighten the tax burden on labor . Taking into account the personal income tax and various social contributions, taxation of labor income in China is too high . To be sure, taxes are needed to finance social spending, but revenue sources other than taxes on labor income could do the job.