Heavily Indebted Poor Countries
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Heavily_Indebted_Poor_Countries.png
- Color Key:
- Black: Countries which currently qualify for HIPC relief.
- Olive: Countries which are eligible for HIPC relief but have not yet met the necessary conditions.
- Beige: Countries which debt campaigners wish to see added to HIPC list.
The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative aims at assisting the world's poorest countries by bringing their external debt to sustainable levels, conditional on their governments showing satisfactory performance levels.
The program was started as a joint initiative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in 1996. It underwent review and reform in 1999. Debt relief is conditional upon efforts to reduce poverty in the participating countries.
The program has been criticized for having excessively strict criteria for inclusion, for providing inadequate debt relief, and for requiring countries to adopt measures which are likely to increase poverty.
The HIPC program identifies 38 countries, 32 of which are in Sub-Saharan Africa, as being potentially eligible to receive debt relief (2004). The 27 countries that have so far received a combined $54 billion in aid are:
- Benin
- Bolivia
- Burkina Faso
- Cameroon
- Chad
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Ethiopia
- The Gambia
- Ghana
- Guinea
- Guinea-Bissau
- Guyana
- Honduras
- Madagascar
- Malawi
- Mali
- Mauritania
- Mozambique
- Nicaragua
- Niger
- Rwanda
- São Tomé and Príncipe
- Senegal
- Sierra Leone
- Tanzania
- Uganda
- Zambia
External links
- Official HIPC website (http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTDEBTDEPT/0,,contentMDK:20260411~menuPK:528655~pagePK:64166689~piPK:64166646~theSitePK:469043,00.html)
- HIPC Debt Relief: Myths and Reality (Jan Joost Teunissen and Age Akkerman (eds.), Fondad, 2004, book, pdf) (http://www.fondad.org/publications/hipc/contents.htm)
- Dossier on Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (http://www.cadtm.org/en.mot.php3?id_mot=145) by the Committee to Abolish the Third World Debt.af:Hoogsverskuldigde Arm Ontwikkelende Lande
de:Hochverschuldete arme Entwicklungsländer fr:Pays pauvres très endettés nl:Heavily Indebted Poor Countries zh:重債窮國