Press Release - 19^th April, 2001

Launch of Jubilee 2000 successor website.

Jubilee + - an official successor organisation to Jubilee 2000, launches a new website www.jubileeplus.org today, with stories about the debt crisis in Ghana, Pakistan and Argentina.

We lead with a story about the IMF's threat to withold $175 million of debt relief for Ghana. We launch our Opinion section with a debate raging in West Africa: "Should Ghana accept debt relief from the IMF/World Bank?" Jubilee+ posts a view from a special correspondent in Accra who argues in favour of Ghana entering the World Bank’s HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Country) Initiative. AkotoAmpaw from the Ghanaian Jubilee 2000 campaign, argues against.

There are also profiles of a major sovereign creditor (Paul O’Neill, US Treasury Secretary); a debtor (President Kufour, Ghana); Laura Vargas, from the Peruvian Jubilee 2000 campaign; and Oscar Ugarteche, an expert on Latin American debt and globalisation.

The new site will provide vital data on debtor nations; the most comprehensive debt and finance glossary on the net; accurate facts, up-to-date analysis and information on sovereign debt, finance and economics.

There will also be reviews of books on debt and international finance, and longer analyses of the impact of finance capital on the global economy. The site opens with an article on the impact of dollarisation in Latin America by Jürgen Schuldt, professor on Economics at the Pacific University in Lima, Peru.