The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - one year on briefing

Jubilee Debt Campaign has released a short briefing on the Gleneagles G8 debt deal - now known as the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative - detailing the good, the bad and the ugly of the deal and its delivery over the last year.

You can download the briefing as a PDF here. A version of the briefing has also been produced in Spanish here.

The main points of the briefing are:

THE GOOD

Some debt cancelled

• A total of $36 billion of multilateral debt is being cancelled across 21 countries in 2006. This could rise to as much as $50 billion across 42 countries if others qualify.

Cancellation is delivering

• Countries like Zambia, Tanzania and Ghana are already benefiting from the cancellation. Zambia's new budget includes money to employ 4,500 new teachers, and abolishes fees for rural healthcare.

100% principle conceded

• The cancellation of 100% of some debts is a significant step. Rather than granting debt 'relief' so that countries can carry on paying, politicians have accepted, at least in principle, that full cancellation is needed.

THE BAD

They think it's all over

• The deal does NOT deliver 100% debt cancellation, as some have claimed. It cancels some of the debts of some of the countries that need cancellation - but there's a long way to go before the debt crisis is over.

MDRI is the new HIPC

• Many countries that need debt cancellation, like Kenya and Indonesia, are not covered by the deal, as it is linked to the discredited HIPC initiative. Research shows that 107 countries need some form of debt cancellation just to meet their people's basic needs - but this deal covers a maximum of 42.

1 out of 10

• The deal excludes important creditors like the Inter-American Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank, and takes no account of the legitimacy of debts. At most, 10% of the $500bn in poor country debts will be cancelled as a result of the deal.

THE UGLY

Fiddling the figures

• The World Bank saved itself $5bn after the G8 by excluding debts from 2004 from the deal. It also tried to make countries wait 15 months to receive debt cancellation - but campaigners forced this down to 3.

Strings still attached

• Debt cancellation is still linked to harmful and anti-democratic economic policy conditions - like privatising services, cutting public spending and opening infant industries to competition. These strings should be cut - find out more here.