World Bank push IMF on Zambia, as British politician sees debt effect first-hand

 

The World Bank representative in Zambia has called on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other bilateral donors to ensure that Zambia qualifies for the Highly Indebted Poor Countries(HIPC) status.

In an unusually direct and public appeal to the IMF, the World Bank representative, Laurence Clarke, told news agency IRIN that the HIPC status, once granted, would help Zambia reduce its debt to a sustainable level. He said some donors at the Paris Club meeting had indicated their willingness to waive the eligibility requirements for Zambia.

Under World Bank criteria, a country can only qualify for HIPC status if it faces an unsustainable debt situation "after the full application of current debt relief mechanisms and would have to demonstrate an appropriate track record of adjustment and reform".

Meanwhile, the controversial British Conservative politician, Ann Widdecombe, has come face to face with the effect of Zambia's debt burden.

Miss Widdecombe, the Shadow Health minister in the British parliament, was visiting Zambia with CAFOD, the UK Catholic relief agency in order to see for herself the effects of third world debt on the country's poverty-stricken population.

Visiting a clinic providing basic health care, Miss Widdecombe was shocked at the dilapidated state of the clinic - the only one for miles around. Its demoralised nurse told her she was poorly paid and sometimes not paid at all. There were chickens scratching about the wards and they had hardly any medicine, equipment or cleaning materials.

Before the visit Miss Widdecombe was sceptical about CAFOD's support for the Jubilee 2000 campaign to cancel poor countries' unpayable debts. She believed debt relief should only be given in cases where governments had agreed to spend the extra money on health and education and to allow monitoring by the west of how the money was actually spent.

CAFOD hoped to impress on her the value of involving ordinary people in indebted countries in decisions on debt relief and how it should be spent, and also to convince her of the urgency of the need for debt relief.

During the visit Miss Widdecombe met numerous Zambians who had been turned away from clinics because they couldn't afford the fees introduced to help the government repay its debt to the West. She was distressed to learn that infant mortality rates were rising with one child in five dying before its fifth birthday and that life expectancy had fallen to 42 years. CAFOD told Miss Widdecombe Zambia spends three times as much paying interest on its debts as it spends on health care.

At a squalid shanty area outside the capital Lusaka she visited a shop that was home to 15 children and saw children being taught in a church because they had no school; they sat on rocks because there were no desks or chairs.

Zambia spends five times as much paying interest on its debts as it spends on education. Half of Zambian children don't go to school because their parents can't afford the fees and one Lusaka teacher said that every time fees are raised around 20 students drop out, never to return.

At the end of the visit Miss Widdecombe said she believed the case for debt relief for Zambia was very strong. "If you can start agreeing these mechanisms now [for ensuring debt relief benefits the poor] I see no reason for extra delay beyond the year 2000," she said.

According to figures quoted by Zambian non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the country's external debt had increased steadily from about US$3.3 million in 1980 to US $7.1 million. Quoting figures released by the UN Development Programme for 1989-1994, the NGOs argued that 89 percent of people in rural areas and 60 percent of urban dwellers were poor.

Pointing out that poverty was the single most prominent and pervasive phenomenon in the country, the NGOs say 84.6 percent of Zambia's population live below a poverty line based on an income of US $1 a day.

This text incorporates a report by Chris Holt, Editor of CAFOD Magazine