Jubilee 2000 dominates Bank & Fund HIPC review

Jubilee 2000 dominates the paper submitted by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to the their boards of executive directors on 2 April, as part of the review of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative.

The paper says that evidence submitted by non-government organisations and interested governments calls for "deeper, broader and faster debt reduction and to link debt relief more tightly to poverty reduction programmes". Most commentators argued that debt sustainability had been defined too narrowly and must include the development needs of HIPCs.

The paper gives prominence to the Jubilee 2000 campaign, noting in particular:

• the importance of the symbol of the "chains of debt";
• calls for debt cancellation as an issue of justice;
• demands for cancellation in the year 2000;
• closer involvement of civil society in debt relief, new borrowing, and the use of money released;
• delinking debt relief from structural adjustment (ESAF) conditions; and
• the objection to "creditors playing a dual role as judge and interested party".

On the last point, prominence is given to the call for a neutral "debt review body" which would determine how much debt could be paid, under a procedure similar to chapter 9 of US bankruptcy laws.

The report does not make firm recommendations, but the authors appear to back deeper debt relief (although not to levels called for by campaigners) while being resistant to the focus on the year 2000.

The report seems sympathetic to changing to sustainability criteria, perhaps to some sort of fiscal criterion such as share of government revenue or share of GDP instead of the widely criticised share of export earnings. Prominence is also given to proposals by Jubilee 2000 members Oxfam, Cafod and Eurodad.