Advertisement

Britain Offers Debt Relief

Share
From Associated Press

Britain announced Saturday that it will forgive more than $1.43 billion in debt from 41 of the world’s most impoverished countries--provided that they can ensure the money goes toward health care, education and the alleviation of poverty.

Treasury chief Gordon Brown said the move will help create a “virtuous circle of debt relief, poverty reduction and sustainable economic development.”

Brown’s office said 12 nations, including Cameroon, Honduras and Senegal, will have their debt payments written off immediately, while eight more are likely to meet the government’s criteria by year’s end. In all, $850 million will be forgiven this year, the government said.

Advertisement

An additional 21 countries that are involved in violent conflict or have failed to meet the criteria will have their payments held in trust and returned to them once they qualify.

“It is one of the tragedies of this jubilee year that so many countries in Africa are involved in wars, and of course, you have no guarantee that debt relief will not go to the weapons of war rather than poverty reduction,” Brown told the British Broadcasting Corp.

“What we are proposing to do today is renounce our right to any benefit from these debt interest payments, to put this money aside,” he added. “When these countries get their poverty reduction programs in place, we will backdate the payments to them.”

At a Saturday rally in London organized by the Jubilee 2000 movement campaigning for cancellation of debts owed by impoverished countries, Brown called on other nations to follow Britain’s lead.

Advertisement