Call to cancel Southern Africa debt

 

MPs from southern Africa and Europe called for more extensive debt cancellation, but their call has been ignored by European ministers.

In a statement, the MPs and other participants at a conference in Vienna declared that “ending the debt crisis has to be seen as an urgent priority”. In particular:

• “The fall in the growth rate of the global economy is accompanied by a dramatic fall in ... commodity prices, making the payment of debt services even more damaging to social welfare priorities than before.”

• “Experience shows that HIPC terms are not sufficient to resolve the debt-problems of many SADC countries.”

• “HIPC terms must be delinked from ESAF conditionalities.”

• “odious debt” contracted by the apartheid regime and debt by countries subjected to apartheid attacks “should be totally erased”.

The conference had an unusually large representation of elected members of parliament -- more than 55 members of parliaments of Europe and southern Africa, including the speakers or deputy speakers of 6 parliaments. They joined 250 NGO representatives and experts from Europe and southern Africa at the First EU-SADC Parliamentary-NGO Conference in Vienna, Austria, 12-14 October 1998. The conference was hosted by the Austrian parliament and ENIASA (European Network for Information and Action on Southern Africa); Austria is president of the EU for the second half of 1998.

The conference sent a strong message to the Third EU/SADC Ministerial Conference which took place in Vienna, Austria 3-4 November 1998. But EU ministers rejected the call. Far from making debt an urgent priority, the ministers relegated it to “other issues”; far from rejecting HIPC, they “welcomed” it.

But the division was clear. EU ministers were forced to “note the view of SADC that their debt servicing obligations are often done at the expense of investment in the social sectors of health and education and that they have the potential to distort national priorities and to deprive countries of resources for investment and stimulation of economic growth.”

But having taken note of the southern African view, they did nothing to help.

(excerpts from Vienna statement and communiqué)

Acronyms:

SADC is the Southern African Development Community, the association of the 15 states of southern Africa.

HIPC is the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative of the World Bank and IMF, which is increasingly criticised as providing too little debt relief too late.

ESAF is the IMF Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility. Having an ESAF agreement, and thus an IMF structural adjustment programme, is a condition of HIPC debt relief.