G8 offers `crumbs of comfort' to the poorest countries

The Group of Eight industrial countries are only offering "crumbs of comfort" to the world's poorest countries with their latest initiatives for improved debt relief, a leading campaign group has said.

Jubilee 2000, which groups churches and other organisations campaigning for sweeping debt write-offs for highly-indebted poor countries, said in a report the new proposals, to be unveiled this month in Cologne, Germany, were paltry.

"This report reveals that despite flowery speeches and grand gestures, G8 leaders are offering only crumbs of comfort to the world's most indebted nations," said Jubilee 2000 director Ms Ann Pettifor.

In recent months many of the G8 countries - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States - have been tripping over each other to offer ever more generous sounding debt relief for poor countries.

But Jubilee 2000 says that even under the most generous offer, put forward by Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, each person in the world's 52 poorest countries would receive debt relief equivalent to £1.84 a year. Mr Brown has called for rich countries to wipe out $50 billion (£35 billion) of poor countries debt. This is considerably higher than the amounts foreseen under the existing Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative launched by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in 1996.

But the problem is, says Jubilee 2000, that of the $216 billion owed by the world's poorest countries, $100 billion is not being serviced anyway, so debt relief of less than $100 billion does not free up new resources for spending on things like health and education.

The report gives the example of Mozambique, the world's third-poorest country which currently pays $113 million a year servicing debt. Under the HIPC scheme, for which Mozambique is about to qualify, this sum only falls to $100 million.

Jubilee has calculated that the new G8 proposals, which include a relaxation of the criteria for eligibility for HIPC relief and a shortening of the qualification period, would only reduce Mozambique's annual debt service payments to $88 million.