Knowledge Centre : Economy : Debt : Page 5
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- Small change for a high price: Conditional debt relief in Mali
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As the third poorest country in the world according to UNDP's Human Development Index, Mali faces significant challenges in providing basic services such as clean water, health care and education to its citizens. In the last three years, Mali's debt stock has been reduced significantly as a result of the country's participation in the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative and later on the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI). This note looks at the implications of debt in Mali, and the consequences that follow having a large debt burden and obtaining debt relief. It also looks at future prospects and challenges in financing poverty reduction, including in relation to new lenders such as China (Eurodad, Martine Dahle Huse, June 2007).
(Added: Tue Aug 21 2007 Hits: 110)
- Southern Links
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Southern Links campaigns on issues of economic injustice affecting the world's poorest people. They work alongside committed activists in the South and with partners in the North to achieve real change for the world's poorest people. Southern Links are committed to a new and dynamic phase of the internationalist movement to restore justice in international financial arrangements and to support the campaigns of the Southern poor for economic freedom.
(Added: Thu Mar 25 2004 Modified: Thu Jun 16 2005 Hits: 459)
- Sovereign Debt in Central / Eastern European and Commonwealth of Independent States Countries [pdf]
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This Working Paper analyses the macro-economic situation of Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia Montenegro which are confronted with the build-up of substantial foreign debt stocks in the recent years, and considers how the outstanding debt should be treated by multi- and bilateral creditors in future. (Jurgen Kaiser, Hartmut Kowsky, Benedikt Schueller, April 2006)
(Added: Wed Jun 21 2006 Modified: Fri Sep 15 2006 Hits: 55)
- Stop the debt vultures!
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n 1999, a 'vulture fund' called Donegal International bought a debt owed by Zambia, originally worth $15 million and then valued at about $30 million, for a knock-down price of $3.3 million. Now it has sued Zambia for the full amount, plus interest and costs - a staggering total of over $55 million! On 15th February 2007, a judge in London rejected the size of Donegal's claim, after Zambia fought back in the courts. But he nevertheless ruled that under law Donegal is entitled to something from Zambia. The exact total is to be determined, but may be around $20 million. This would be half of the amount that Zambia is due to save from debt relief this year: but it desperately needs all its money to invest in teachers, doctors and infrastructure. Donegal must not take this money, and you can help. Jubilee Debt Campaign, together with Oxfam, is calling on Donegal International not to claim this money. Please add your voice to our call. Your emails really do make a difference.
http://www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk/?lid=2893
(Added: Tue Feb 20 2007 Hits: 304)
- Ten Ounces of IMF Gold Equivalent to One Human Life
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ActionAid, April 16, 2005 -The International development organization, ActionAid International, today condemned the International Monetary Fund's failure to act on a plan of selling IMF gold reserves to relieve the debts of the world's poorest nations, saying this failure may lead to over a million poverty-related deaths.
http://www.actionaidusa.org/pr_newsalerts.php#wb_gold
(Added: Wed May 11 2005 Modified: Tue Jun 14 2005 Hits: 73)
- The African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD)
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AFRODAD is a civil society organisation born of a desire to see lasting solutions to Africa's mounting Debt problem and its negative impact on development. The activities of AFRODAD are aimed at increasing policy responses and the role of civil society in influencing such responses in the field of Debt and development. AFRODAD's work is centred on the following programmes: Research and Policy Analysis; Information and Dialogue; Lobby and Advocacy; Civil Society Capacity Building. AFRODAD's vision is an equitable and sustainable development process leading to a prosperous society in Africa and worldwide. It's mission is to secure policy change that will redress the underdevelopment fuelled by Africa's Debt crisis, through a continuous process of gaining better understanding of the underlying causes of the Debt problem on the basis of continuous research.
(Added: Wed Jun 26 2002 Modified: Tue Jun 14 2005 Hits: 143)
- The basics about debt
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The world's poorest countries pay over $100 million every day to the rich world. Read the basics about how this works - and why it should stop (jubileedebtcampaign, December 2007).
http://www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk/health
(Added: Fri Dec 21 2007 Hits: 99)
- The Committee for the Abolition of the Third World Debt (CADTM)
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The Committee for the Abolition of the Third World Debt (CADTM) is an international network of activists who strive to develop and implement radical alternatives that would contribute to the maintenance, and indeed retrieval, of fundamental human rights all over the world. CADTM's specific focus is the Third World Debt and its aim is to achieve the cancellation of the external public debt in third world countries and subsequently to break the spiral of deeper and deeper indebtedness by setting up models of socially fair and environmentally sustainable development.
(Added: Fri Jan 28 2005 Modified: Tue Jun 14 2005 Hits: 75)
- The DATA Report 2007
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The 2007 DATA Report is the second annual report monitoring the G8's progress in delivering its commitments to Africa by 2010. Tracking progress in Africa is equally, if not more, important but is best carried out by African civil society organisations. Significantly, this year's report measures progress in 2006 - the year when policy changes agreed in 2005 should have begun to take effect. Much more than the 2006 DATA Report, this report is a measure of how seriously the G8 are taking their promises (DATA, 2007).
http://www.thedatareport.org/pdf/DATAREPORT2007.pdf
(Added: Wed Oct 03 2007 Modified: Thu Oct 04 2007 Hits: 45)
- The growing role of Latin American currencies
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This article on the Inter-American Development Bank web-site discusses how Latin American currencies have gained favor amongst debt managers particularly as these economies have managed to remain resilient in the face of the recent US economic downturn.
http://www.iadb.org/NEWS/articledetail.cfm?language=English&ARTID=4659
(Added: Mon Jun 30 2008 Hits: 8)
- The role of the IMF in debt restructurings : lending into arrears, moral hazard and sustainability concerns
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In recent years the IMF has made efforts to build an improved "crisis prevention and resolution framework" that minimizes the size and frequency of bailouts, largely out of a concern with the possible moral hazard consequences of its interventions. This framework, however, which includes an emphasis on greater private sector involvement, the encouragement of the use of collective action clauses and a more effective enforcement of access limits to IMF lending has not generated an observable change in practice. In fact, the IMF has frequently exerted pressure on the debtor and its views have often been biased in favour of the creditors' interests. In particular, its lending into arrears policy (LIA) has been used as a means to induce debtor governments to "accommodate" to these interests. But by providing financing to the debtor through its LIA policy the Fund could potentially play a positive role in reducing the gap between the creditors' "reservation price" and the country's repayment capacity while, at the same time, making sure that the debt burden becomes sustainable. (Lucio Simpson, UNCTAD, 2006)
http://www.g24.org/un-sim06.pdf
(Added: Wed Feb 14 2007 Hits: 105)
- The Transfer of Wealth: Debt and the making of a Global South (pdf)
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Focus on the Global South, October 2000. A thought provoking collection of articles that lay bare the dynamics, the interlinkages and impact of debt, financial institutions and the making of a Global South.
http://www.focusweb.org/publications/Books/Transfer%20of%20Wealth.html
(Added: Tue Jul 13 2004 Modified: Tue Jun 14 2005 Hits: 107)
- The U.S. Proposal: The Financial Mechanics of Delivering 100 Percent Debt Relief [PDF 134KB]
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(Bank Information Center) US Treasury representatives presented their proposal for financing IDA debt relief for HIPC countries this morning at the "U.S. Debt and Development Forum." Representatives of US Treasury at the meeting included Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, John Taylor, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Development Finance and Debt, Bobby Pittman, Jr.
http://www.bicusa.org/bicusa/issues/US%20Proposal%20(Treasury-March%202005).pdf
(Added: Thu Mar 24 2005 Modified: Tue Jun 14 2005 Hits: 71)
- The view from the summit - Gleneagles G8 one year on
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One year has passed since the G8 summit in Gleneagles in July 2005, where 36 million people in over 70 countries united under the Global Call to Action against Poverty. As the Russian G8 approaches, this paper explores progress (or the lack thereof) since the G8 in Gleneagles in the areas of debt, aid, conflict, trade, and climate change. (Oxfam, June 2006)
(Added: Wed Jun 28 2006 Modified: Tue Aug 15 2006 Hits: 188)
- The world is still waiting: broken G8 promises are costing millions of lives
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As the 2007 German G8 summit approaches, the demands of the millions of anti-poverty campaigners worldwide are clear. G8 leaders must increase and improve aid to provide health, education, water and sanitation for all. They must cancel more debt and deliver trade justice. They must take urgent action to bring peace to the world's most troubled countries and to halt the devastating impact of climate change. Where action has been taken by G8 countries, lives are being saved. Yet despite some areas of real progress, in the past two years overall progress has fallen far short of promises. The cost of this inaction is millions of lives lost due to poverty. G8 countries must meet their promises to the world. (Oxfam, May 2007)
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/debt_aid/downloads/bp103_g8.pdf
(Added: Fri May 25 2007 Hits: 61)
- Treacherous conditions : How IMF and World Bank policies tied to debt relief are undermining development (PDF)
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A World Development Movement report by Peter Hardstaff. May 2003. This report is part of the World Development Movement's (WDM) ongoing campaign to cancel the unpayable debts of the world's poorest countries and remove the inappropriate and damaging policy conditions attached to debt relief. As well as this failure to provide the resources for full debt cancellation, an equally serious problem with the HIPC initiative is that it is being used by the IMF and World Bank as yet another lever with which to press for free market policy reform in the poorest countries. These policies - known as conditionality - are the focus for this briefing.
http://www.wdm.org.uk/campaigns/cambriefs/debt/treachcond.pdf
(Added: Wed Oct 20 2004 Modified: Tue Jul 19 2005 Hits: 135)
- Uganda Debt Network
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The Uganda Debt Network to promote and advocate for pro-poor policies and full participation of poor people in influencing poverty focused policies, monitoring the utilization of public resources and ensuring that borrowed resources are prudently managed in an open, accountable and transparent manner so as to benefit the Ugandan people.
(Added: Wed Sep 21 2005 Hits: 71)
- Unfinished business: 10 years of drop the debt
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Jubilee Debt Campaign's tenth anniversary report finds that at least another $400 billion of debt cancellation is needed if the world's poorest countries are to combat the challenge of global poverty.
http://www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk/unfinished
(Added: Wed May 21 2008 Hits: 30)
- US Faces Calls for Untied Loans to Help Launch East Timor's Statehood
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The United States and other major donor countries will next week face heavy pressure to come up with enough money to spare the world's newest country from having to apply for loans from international financial institutions
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/bwi-wto/wbank/2002/0510timor.htm
(Added: Fri Jul 19 2002 Modified: Tue Jun 14 2005 Hits: 117)
- What about us? Debt and the countries the G8 left behind [PDF]
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A Christian Aid report, September 2005. Campaigners have long realised that debt is one of the key obstacles preventing lowand middle-income countries from developing and achieving their full potential. Unfortunately, despite the hype and the hope, the world's richest nations again failed to deliver. Only 18 out of 153 developing countries will receive anything from the G8 deal on debt, with, at best, a further ten joining them by the end of 2007. This Christian Aid report shows that the deal leaves at least 40 countries still needing immediate and total cancellation of external debts. Many more require massive reductions in debt repayments if they are to eliminate extreme poverty.
http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/indepth/509debt/Debt%20report_Published-Sept2005.pdf
(Added: Fri Oct 14 2005 Hits: 131)
- What the World Bank lost in Berlin
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In Berlin donor countries gathered for the last meeting of the 15th Replenishment round of the International Development Association (IDA) - the arm of the World Bank which gives highly concessional loans and grants to the world's poorest countries. But the World Bank and its European members lost a key opportunity to reform damaging World Bank policies (Eurodad, 19 December 2007).
http://www.eurodad.org/whatsnew/articles.aspx?id=1944
(Added: Tue Jan 08 2008 Hits: 69)
- Who gets debt relief ?
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Debt relief deals worth a total of $100bn have failed to tackle the problems of the poor countries they are meant to help as for many countries, indebtedness is a symptom of deeper issues. Nicolas Chauvin of Princeton University, and Aart Kraay of the World Bank, examined the debt relief programmes offered to 62 poor countries since the late 1980s. They found that, in general, writing off debt has little impact on public spending or gross domestic product per capita, and many recipients slide back into the red again and again. Conditional on per capita incomes and policy, more indebted countries are not much more likely to receive debt relief. But countries that have large debts especially to multilateral creditors are more likely to receive debt relief. Most of the persistence in debt relief is driven by slowly changing country characteristics, indicating that it may be difficult for countries to"exit"from cycles of repeated debt relief. (World Bank, August 2006)
(Added: Mon Sep 11 2006 Hits: 81)
- World Bank Approves US$37 Billion For Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative
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The World Bank's Board of Executive Directors today approved financing and implementation details for the World Bank's contribution toward the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), which will cancel the IDA debt of some of the world's poorest countries starting on July 1, 2006, at the start of the Bank's new fiscal year. The World Bank's Board of Executive Directors today approved financing and implementation details for the World Bank's contribution toward the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), which will cancel the IDA debt of some of the world's poorest countries starting on July 1, 2006, at the start of the Bank's new fiscal year. IDA is expected to provide more than US$37 billion in debt relief over 40 years. Initially, 17 HIPC countries will be eligible for 100 percent debt cancellation.
(Added: Fri Mar 31 2006 Hits: 87)
- World Bank Bonds Boycott
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The World Bank Bonds Boycott is an international grassroots campaign that is building political and financial pressure on the World Bank in the spirit of the anti-Apartheid movement. The campaign demands an end to the World Bank's harmful "structural adjustment" programs and related policies; 100% cancellation of illegitimate international debt from the World Bank's existing resources; and an end to environmentally destructive projects. The World Bank raises nearly all of its funds by issuing bonds on the private capital market. The boycott builds power for groups in the global South campaigning against World Bank projects and structural adjustment policies; educates people and movements in the U.S. and other rich countries about the World Bank and its impacts; challenges the World Bank's public image and primary source of financing (its bonds); and builds democracy by empowering citizens to demand a say over how their money is invested.
(Added: Tue Aug 06 2002 Modified: Tue Jun 14 2005 Hits: 126)
- World Bank's Poverty Reduction Support Credit: Continuity or Change?
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This study examines the Poverty Reduction Support Credit, the World Bank's programmatic lending introduced in 2001. The study aims to test the World Bank's claim that the PRSC allows more flexibility in terms of conditionality, and to contribute to the broader debate on the level and content of conditionality, in particular economic policy conditions. The author looks at 13 PRSC programmes across Africa, Asia and Latin America, with particular attention paid to privatisation schemes. The findings show that while the number of binding conditions imposed by the World Bank has decreased, this has been accompanied by a sharp upturn in the number of benchmark or 'soft' conditions, and there has been a significant increase in public finance management and good governance conditions. The overall thrust of the conditions are similar to previous World Bank approach, with a lack of flexibility in approach in terms of policy choices, despite their often direct conflict with public opinion and parliamentary motions. Finally the report highlights the lack of transparency in how PRSCs are developed and adopted with both Parliaments and civil society excluded from examining a programme which will impact on their lives and may also mount as debt. The report ends with recommendations to the World Bank on policy conditions, criticality, consultation, transparency, cross conditionality, donor alignment and further assessments. (Angela Wood, Debt and Development Coalition Ireland, July 2005)
http://www.debtireland.org/resources/ddci-re-PRSCReportFINAL.htm
(Added: Fri Apr 28 2006 Modified: Tue Jun 27 2006 Hits: 91)
