WASHINGTON - Finance Ministers from across the globe have reached a historic agreement that wipes out the debt of eighteen of the poorest countries in the world. The deal to cancel out around $55 billion debt had been initially inked at the Gleneagles summit of the Group of Eight in July.
The International Monetary Fund has also agreed to take concrete steps to put this plan into action. And although major shareholders in the World Bank would still need to ratify it, British Chancellor Gordon Brown was confident of the deal coming through, "The breakthrough is that we now have a set of proposals that are supported by the whole international community. Agreement has been reached on all the elements. That means this historic process of completing the debt write-off that started many years ago has ended today," he said. The IMF's 24-member executive board is to meet soon to formally adopt this agreement. Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US backed this deal at the historic summit in Scotland this summer and the nitty-gritty was sorted out today.
The deal was welcomed by African nations and organizations that are working for the betterment of the continent. Max Lawson, policy adviser to the international relief agency Oxfam said, "We've seen a real breakthrough on debt cancellation by the IMF. The stage is now set for the World Bank shareholders to fulfill their part of the bargain."
The countries, which stand to benefit from the deal, are Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Cosme Sehlin, Benin's finance minister welcomed the deal but said, "The devil is clearly in the implementation details."
Posted
on : Sun, 25 Sep 2005 15:25 GMT | Debt News
By : Mark Richardson
|
