The
Mad House of Poor Country Debt!
The Biggest Millennium Challenge
- Approaching
the millennium one person is born every second into bad, unpayable
debt in the world's poorest countries.
- The cost of
the current faltering proposal for debt reduction for the poorest
countries is around £3.4billion. Payments will be over several years
and not a penny of relief has been given yet. It seems a lot of
money, but it is:
- Less than
a third of the cost of the Channel Tunnel, for which Eurotunnel
froze payments on a debt of £8billion in 1995;
- Less of
a challenge when compared to the generous debt forgiveness offered
to Eurodisney after the company incurred losses of £860 million
in just two years;
- Little
more than the likely error in UK Treasury forecasts for this
year's public sector borrowing requirement;
- Equivalent
to what the US spent on going to the cinema in 1995;
- Little
considering that more money will be spent on internally restructuring
the World Bank before the year 2000 than they are likely to
pay out in debt relief in that time.
- The poorest
countries are caught in a paradox - the more they repay, the greater
their debt. By 2015 their debt to export ratio will be three times
worse than it was in 1994, rising to over 1000%
- Just £49 million
debt relief for Uganda could save the lives of 398,000 children
under five, and 13,000 women who would have died in childbirth,
in addition to providing primary education for 2 million more children.
- Mozambique's
Finance Ministry predicts that ,even after relief from the new debt
initiative, debt service payments in the next millennium will be
three times their average in the early 1990's.
- The United
Nations estimates that 21 million children will die by the millennium
if debt relief is not accelerated.
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