Efase dèt Ayiti a. FMI ak Bank Mondyal ap pese peyi a...

Posted on Sat, Dec. 27, 2008
Debt relief for Haiti
By CENTER FOR ECONOMIC AND POLICY RESEARCH

Below are excerpts from the Center for Economic and Policy Research report, Debt Cancellation for Haiti: No Reason for Further Delays.

Haiti is the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere, with 76 percent of its population below the poverty line and a life expectancy of 58.1 years.

Yet it was originally excluded from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank's Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative for debt cancellation in 1996, because of a technicality relating to its debt-service burden.

Can't meet requirements
Although it was subsequently included (in 2006), because of this delay Haiti is currently struggling to meet the requirements for cancellation of most of its total $1.7 billion foreign public debt.

Thus, while the other HIPC countries in the Western Hemisphere (Bolivia, Guyana, Honduras and Nicaragua) have already received debt cancellation under the HIPC and Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), Haiti still has to reach the ''completion point'' under the HIPC initiative in order to receive debt cancellation.

Haiti was expected to reach completion point by September 2008. However, this did not happen, and now the country has to pay an additional $44.5 million in debt-service payments to multilateral institutions (mostly the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank).

This is equivalent to about 26 percent of Haiti's spending on public health, where there are many vital unmet needs. Furthermore, this total does not include bilateral debt service of $11.4 million, some cancellation of which was also expected.

The IDB might cover a portion of Haiti's debt service payments to that institution, at least for the first half of 2009, since Haiti is now expected to reach completion point by this date.

There are other reasons to avoid delay. There is little reason to believe that the conditions set by the IMF and World Bank for further debt cancellation are likely to benefit Haiti.

Although the experience of HIPC debt cancellation is positive with regard to the funds freed up from debt cancellation being used for poverty-reducing expenditures, the conditions attached to such debt cancellation do not have a positive track record.

For example, in April 2007, the IMF's Independent Evaluation Office released a report that examined the experience of 29 Sub-Saharan African countries that underwent Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) programs, and were therefore subject to IMF conditions, from 1999-2005.

The report was highly critical of the IMF's role, and among other findings noted that nearly three-quarters of the aid money reaching these countries was not spent. Rather, at the IMF's urging, this money was used to pay off debt and to add to reserves.

Great economic damage
Another reason that these institutions should grant immediate debt cancellation is that they contributed to enormous economic damage in Haiti by cutting off all disbursements from 2001 -- 2004. There is considerable evidence that this cutoff of aid was part of a deliberate effort by the U.S. government to destabilize and ultimately topple the elected government of Haiti.



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Cette dette ne doit pas être effacée car si elle l'est les voleurs du gouvernements vont simplement utiliser cette opportunité pour prendre encore plus d'argent...

Oh, les grands voleurs d'Haiti!!!

Ils peuvent voler, voler et atteindre le niveau de la dette?
Ils ont la capacité d'absorber des millions que le gouvernement ne peut pas dépenser?

S'il vous plait, Jude, éclairez-nous.

Bankye FMI yo san etik, yo kontinye ap prete yon ma lajan ak yon paket vole. Chay sa a tonbe sou do pep Ayiti Toma a ki kontinye ap vinn pi pov akoz de dil saa yo. Nou kwe ke bankye sa yo konplis lan mize pep nou an.

Sasaye a écrit:Oh, les grands voleurs d'Haiti!!!

Ils peuvent voler, voler et atteindre le niveau de la dette?
Ils ont la capacité d'absorber des millions que le gouvernement ne peut pas dépenser?

S'il vous plait, Jude, éclairez-nous.

vous jouez à l'innocent alors que tout le monde connaît bien la situation, comme en témoigne le message de ed428.