Rich Nations Can't Agree on Debt Relief
11 October 2004

Rich nations at a conference this month failed to agree again on a remedy for the crippling debt of the world's poorest nations. The top policy-making committee of the International Monetary Fund, to whom most of the money is owed, along with the World Bank, pledged only "further consideration" of large-scale debt forgiveness for impoverished nations.

A ray of hope from the conference is a seeming growing consensus to extend debt relief well past the current levels of forgiving about 50 percent of a nation's debt. Granting 100 percent forgiveness to the world's "heavily indebted poor countries" would go far beyond debt relief initiatives of 1996 and 1999 which were initially hailed as major breakthroughs but have failed to lift out of crushing poverty due to debt the two dozen or so countries that qualified for those plans.