Global Policy Forum

By Emad Mekay

Anti-debt campaigners are hailing as groundbreaking Monday's decision by Norway to cancel 80 million dollars in debt owed by five poor nations after it determined that the loans were not granted in a good faith effort to promote development. Several leading non-governmental organisations immediately touted the decision as a model for other wealthy creditors to follow in order to ease the global debt crisis that has squeezed many developing nations.

A press release from the Norwegian foreign ministry said the countries that will benefit are Ecuador, Egypt, Jamaica, Peru and Sierra Leone. Burma and Sudan are two other countries that could benefit from the plan in the future. In its announcement -- the first of its kind by a rich lender nation -- the Norwegian government publicly admitted it had made "a policy failure" and that it had played a role in adding to the "illegitimate debt" that those poor nations accumulated over the years and which have eaten into their social spending budgets.

The decision is also significant because Norway broke ranks with the cartel of creditors who have mostly denied they were lending irresponsibly or for political reasons. Rich nations, especially in the powerful group of bilateral creditors known as the Paris Club, and through multilateral lenders like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, have long denied promoting illegitimate debt to corrupt governments or failed policies in developing countries.

In its statement, the Norwegian government said the "illegitimate debt" in question came about as the result of a campaign in effect from 1976 to 1980 to bolster the country's troubled shipbuilding industry by selling 156 vessels and shipping equipment to poor countries. The projects in poor nations fell quickly into unsustainability and the Norwegian government became their creditor.

"As a creditor country, Norway has a shared responsibility for the debts that followed," the Norwegian government said in its statement. "In canceling these claims, Norway takes the responsibility for allowing these five countries to terminate their remaining repayments on these debts," said Minister of International Development Erik Solheim. An official probe in the late 1980s found that the effort lacked adequate analyses of the real needs of poor nations as well as risk assessments. The main conclusion was that this kind of lending campaign should not be repeated. "Norway's government has, in effect, admitted that its lending in these particular cases was irresponsible and motivated by domestic concerns, rather than an objective analysis of the development needs of the countries involved," said Hurley of Eurodad.

The proposal comes as part of the government's new 2007 budget put before parliament. It suggests that the debts be cancelled unilaterally and unconditionally, without extra budgetary allocation. The government of Norway, an affluent oil-rich country, said it will not report the cancelled debts as official development assistance to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of 30 rich nations. This means that the debt forgiveness will be supplementary to Norway's ordinary official aid. Such a move breaks the tradition of counting partial debt alleviation as part of new aid to poor nations -- a practice critics say has led to artificially inflated aid budgets that give the impression there is more money available for developing countries than there really is.

"Norway's statement this week, and its willingness to accept responsibility for illegitimate lending, set an important precedent that other international creditors must heed," said Ann-Louise Colgan, acting co-executive director of the Washington-based Africa Action. Development groups have lobbied for years for the cancellation of debts owed by poor nations. They routinely condemn illegitimate debt and other forms of debts where poor populations have not befitted from loans incurred under dictatorships or through corrupt dealings or ill-conceived economic policies.

The anti-debt campaigners now say Norway's decision should encourage international financial institutions, particularly the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), to which poor nations owe billions of dollars, to follow suit. Colgan said that these institutions "can no longer turn a blind eye to their own historically unfair and corrupt lending practices. They must follow Norway's lead, and cancel the illegitimate debts being repaid now by impoverished countries in Africa and throughout the global South."

Norwegian groups praised Solheim, minister for international development, for standing behind the decision. "This is clearly a case of illegitimate debt. Norway broke its own rules by not assessing the development needs of the countries we were exporting our ships to," said Kjetil G. Abildsnes, chair of Jubilee Norway. "But Solheim is now canceling all of this debt. This is a historic victory for us. It's the end of an embarrassing story for Norway. We applaud Solheim for this bold step."