Pick Up the Pace: UK responds to campaign
Firstly, as we have been calling for in the Pick Up the Pace campaign, the Government has changed the criteria for the UK Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative, whereby the UK pays its share of the World Bank and African Development Bank debt service of countries that do not qualify for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative.
The UK will now use a different measure to assess whether countries have strong enough public financial management to be sure that the proceeds of debt relief will be properly used. This means five new (mostly very small) countries will now get debt relief under this scheme: Bhutan, Kiribati, Lesotho, Samoa, and Vanuatu.
The UK also announced additional funding – up to £10 million – for the World Bank’s Debt Reduction Facility. This facility enables countries to ‘buy back’ their commercial debts at a deep discount, thereby reducing the risk of these debts being bought up by vulture funds who might then seek repayment of the full amount of the debt through the courts.
This is a great start for the campaign - but it falls a long way short of meeting the scale of the ongoing debt crisis. Click here to find out more about our Pick Up the Pace campaign.
