December 19, 2000
Jubilee 2000 welcomed the debt moratorium announced today by the Canadian government, but urged Finance Minister Paul Martin to extend it to include countries such as Rwanda.
The Canadian finance ministry announced that from January 1st 2000, Canada will apply a moratorium on debt repayments from eleven of the poorest countries in Africa and Latin America. These countries last year paid $13 million (C$20 million) to Canada in debt service, and were scheduled to pay $ 50 million (C$75 million) in 2001 – resources that can now be used directly to fight poverty. But the moratorium will not be applied to other countries on the HIPC list that owe money to Canada, such as Rwanda and Liberia, because of their poor human rights records.
Jubilee 2000 was critical of this exclusion: "We are pleased that Paul Martin has taken a further step on debt for certain countries, but the Canadian government should not be benefiting from the debt burden faced by any of the poorest nations, particularly those in conflict. We note that creditors discriminate between countries in conflict, favouring countries like Uganda, but penalising those whose conflicts do not fall into line with creditor nations' foreign policy objectives. Canada should not be benefiting from the conflict in countries like the Congo; instead debt repayments to Canada from these countries should be put into a trust fund and then returned to the people of the Congo once the political situation is stable" said Ann Pettifor.
She continued: "The Canadian government has consistently pushed for international developments on debt cancellation, and should act unilaterally by extending the moratorium not only to all HIPC countries, but also to nations like Haiti, Nigeria and Peru, amongst the poorest in the world." All the eleven countries are amongst the 41 listed on the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries program. Once they have completed the program (1-3 years), these countries will have all their debt to Canada cancelled - $457 million (C$696 million).
Notes for editors:
1.Canada was the first of the G7 to pledge cancellation of 100% of the debts of the 41 HIPC countries once they have finished the HIPC program. Now all G7 countries have made this pledge, but the IMF and World Bank are planning to cancel only one-third of the debts owed to them. This means that many of the countries in the HIPC scheme will be paying more on debt than on health or education even after the program is completed. Jubilee 2000 are urging the G7 to use their votes on the Boards of the IMF and World Bank to bring the multilateral institutions into line with the 100% promise made by bilateral governments.
2.On December 2nd, the UK announced that they would stop collecting debt repayments from any HIPC country that owes money to Britain.
3.Jubilee 2000 is an international movement active in over 60 countries worldwide. Over 24 million people have now signed the Jubilee 2000 petition, making it the biggest petition ever.
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