Emad Mekay
13 February 2007
Washington — Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf gained major ground in a campaign to cancel her country's debts with the announcement Tuesday that Washington will write off some 358 million dollars in debts incurred by Liberia's previous undemocratic regimes.
Some U.S. lawmakers, non-governmental organisations and the World Bank are lining up behind calls for other major creditors to follow suit, since the country's total external debts are estimated at 3.7 billion dollars. This amounts to 3,000 percent of Liberia's annual export earnings -- among the world's highest ratios.
Of the 3.7 billion dollars, the International Monetary Fund says that 1.6 billion is owed to multilateral financial institutions, including 740 million dollars to the IMF itself, 530 million dollars to the World Bank, and 255 million dollars to the African Development Bank.
A total of 358 million dollars is owed to the United States alone, whose freed slaves founded the impoverished African nation.
On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "We will cancel that debt -- all of it." She promised to work closely with other key creditors to resolve the multilateral debt issue.
Those creditors are gathering in Washington for the Liberia Partners Forum at the World Bank headquarters, where Johnson-Sirleaf once worked during her exile years, to discuss the country's long-term assistance needs and debt cancellation.
In a speech at the Centre for Global Development in Washington last week, Johnson-Sirleaf appealed to the shareholders of the IMF, the World Bank and the African Development Bank to devise a plan for debt relief that would keep assistance intact for her country.
"We are willing and ready to make the hard decisions, to adopt the right policies, to put in the right systems, if you are willing to be with us and support us, politically, analytically and financially," she told her audience.
The IMF and the World Bank say that the country still has to pay off 1.5 billion dollars in arrears, or interest and penalties, before it can obtain partial debt relief or full cancellation.
The United States is the largest shareholder in the Bank and the Fund and wields enormous influence on decisions by the two heavyweight institutions.
President Johnson-Sirleaf will meet U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday at the White House, where the remaining debt issue is likely to be raised.
Last week, several U.S. lawmakers sent a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson urging him to support immediate and complete cancellation of Liberia's debts and arrears during the Liberia Partners' Forum in Washington.
"We are especially concerned that Liberia may be expected to pay off its arrears to multilateral financial institutions prior to obtaining new assistance in the form of grants, loans, or debt relief from the international community," the U.S. lawmakers said.
"This nation cannot afford additional delays and cannot reasonably be expected to drain such large amounts of money from its already fragile economy."
World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz has indicated his support for cancellation, urging finance ministers from the world's richest nations to back plans to clear the country's arrears.
"We need to do this in a framework of not just the World Bank doing it on its own, but acting in a framework with the IMF and the African Development Bank," he said. "And it's going to require some fresh money from the donors."
The World Bank now vouches for the good economic performance of the country since Johnson-Sirleaf took office in January 2006.
The Washington-based lender says Liberia's infrastructure, destroyed by two decades of ruinous war, is slowly being rebuilt. Economic reforms have increased revenues by nearly 50 percent and the economy grew at a rate of eight percent last year.
The Bank says that areas of past corruption were also being corrected while better financial management procedures were being put into place.
Africa activists and anti-debt campaigners are calling for lenders to wipe clean the country's debts, no strings attached. They delivered over 10,000 Valentine cards to the U.S. Treasury last week asking Secretary Paulson to "have a heart" and cancel Liberia's debt.
Groups like the Centre for Democratic Empowerment in Liberia, Friends of the Earth, the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, the International Labour Rights Fund and Jubilee USA Network say that much of Liberia's debt was incurred by the undemocratic regimes of dictators Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor between 1980 and 2003 and should be written off.
"The country's massive debt burden severely restricts Liberia's capacity to combat poverty," the groups said in a joint statement.
Liberia's civil war lasted for 14 years and cost the lives of more than 250,000 people.
Despite the new democratic government, 85 percent of the country's population of 3.6 million people remains unemployed while three of every four Liberians live on less than one dollar a day.
The capital, Monrovia, remains mostly without electricity and running water.
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