Source:
Fundación Jubileo
Mon Feb 20 2006
Justice for Latin America regarding the debt owed to the IADB
Cancel the debt to the Inter-American Development Bank NOW!
The Platform for Action against Poverty made up of organizations and institutions of the Bolivian civil society, declares:
In July 2005, the G8 announced a plan to cancel US$ 40 billion in debts owed by the world’s eighteen most impoverished nations. Fourteen African countries and four Latin American ones will get benefited in 2006 by the cancellation of their debt to the World Bank, IMF and African Development Fund.
Although several African countries included in this initiative will see the cancellation of up to 90% of their debt, in the case of the four Latin American HIPC countries, that is to say, Bolivia, Guyana, Honduras and Nicaragua, cancellation will barely reach an average 30%. This is so due to the fact that the initiative does not take into account the debts owed by these countries to the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB).
Therefore, we put forward the following demands before the IADB and international cooperation as a whole:
1. The immediate cancellation of the debt owed by the four Latin American HIPC countries to the IADB. In the case of Bolivia, this would imply the total cancellation of US$ 1.6 billion owed to this institution.
2. No supplementary conditions should be tied to such cancellation and the principle of additionality should be respected. Thus, resources required should be mobilised by donors – beyond their development aid budgets – and by means of IADB’s own internal resources; in this sense, the Bank should not deprive the poorest countries of concessional funds since otherwise it will be forcing them to get more expensive loans, in the case of Bolivia, those granted by the Andean Development Corporation (CAF), which excessively increases debt service.
3. The cancellation of debt owed to the IADB by Latin American HIPC countries should only be regarded as a first step. We urge donors to start a process of dialogue and planning aimed at the cancellation of debt to the IADB and the elimination of conditionalities for all those Latin American nations that need to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
4. The Platform for Action against Poverty commits itself to carry out the follow-up to freed-up resources to ensure that they are allocated to the fight against poverty.
5. We join the campaign being carried out by EURODAD (European Network on Debt and Development), LATINDADD, Observatorio de la Deuda en la Globalización (Spain), Instituto de Estudios Nicaragüenses, Fundación Jubileo (Bolivia), CIDSE (International Cooperation for Development and Solidarity), “Sin Duda, sin Deuda” (Spain) and FUNDACIÓN SES (Argentina), precisely to achieve the cancellation of debt owed to the IADB by Latin American countries.
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