Poverty Alleviation
Trade & Debt

Facts And Statistics On Debt

Debt Burden

• Total external debt of low-income countries     - $523 billion
• Total debt service being paid every day by low-income countries   - $90 million
• Africa’s total external debt       - approx $300 billion
• Total debt service being paid every day by Africa    - $65 million
• Low-income countries needing total debt cancellation to meet MDGs
• For every $1 received in grant aid, low income countries pay:   - $2.30 in debt service
• Many African countries spend more on debt than either health or education (e.g. Cameroon, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Senegal, Uganda and Zambia all spent more on debt than health in 2002 (latest figures))
• In 2004, Zambia debt payments to the IMF alone were more than its total education budget
• In 2003, Senegal and Malawi each spent about one third of government revenues on debt service

Funding Dictators And Runaway Interest Rates

• Total loans made to oppressive regimes (low and middle-income countries) - $500 billion
• Loans to South Africa’s apartheid regime (being repaid by current government)  - $22 billion
• Africa’s debt stock in 1970         - $11 billion
• Africa’s debt stock in 2002         - $295 billion
• Total loans originally made to Nigeria      -  $17 billion
• Debt service paid by Nigeria        - $18 billion
• Outstanding debt stock of Nigeria      - $34 billion

‘HIPC’ – Too Little, Too Slow, And With Strings Attached
The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative is the current international debt relief scheme. The ‘Paris Club’ is a group of creditor countries which meet behind closed doors.

• Countries which have received debt cancellation through HIPC  - 19
• Total debt cancellation through HIPC    -   $30 billion over 9 years
• Debt cancellation granted in one day to Iraq by the ‘Paris Club’  - $31 billion (Nov. 04)
• Number of qualified teachers which Zambia was unable to employ because of a public sector wage freeze imposed by the IMF in 2004 as a condition of receiving debt relief - 9,000

IMF Debt – Sell The Gold

• Total debt of all HIPCs to the IMF      - $7 billion
• Value the IMF puts on its gold reserves      - $9 billion
• Actual market value of IMF gold reserves    - approx $45 billion

Relief Works
Funds released by debt relief have been directly used for poverty reduction in Africa, including:-

• Recruiting and training new teachers (e.g. 3,600 new teachers trained each year in Malawi, salaries provided for 5,000
• Community teachers in Mali; teacher numbers doubled in 3 years in Tanzania)
• Funding access to education – primary school fees abolished in Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia. (e.g. numbers of children enrolled in primary school in Uganda more than doubled between 1996 and 2001)
• Healthcare programmes (e.g. childhood immunisation programme in Mozambique)
• Building schools and clinics (e.g. over 2,000 new schools and nearly 32,000 new classrooms in Tanzania)
• Rural roads, sanitation, food security and water systems (special programme in Niger; new roads in Burkina Faso).

Source: Facts and statistics on debt from Jubilee Debt Campaign