[stop-imf] New Report shows debt reduction works

[Robert Weissman]

> From Romilly Greenhill, Jubilee Research:
>
>Dear all,
>
>New research shows that debt relief is having a major impact on health and
>education spending
>
>Here at Jubilee Research, we have today released a report which reviews
>newly available data on government spending on health, education and the
>military in 10 of the African HIPCs that had reached Decision Point by the
>end of the year 2000. The report aims to provide a preliminary estimate of
>the impacts of HIPC relief. While the IMF have done a similar exercise (see
>'The Impact of Debt Reduction under the HIPC Initiative on External Debt
>Service and Social Expenditures), they do not disaggregate health and
>education spending - and most of their numbers are based on so-called 'staff
>estimates' , which could mean anything!
>
>Using figures supplied by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in the
>UK, our research found some pretty dramatic conclusions:
>
>1. In 1998, education spending in the 10 countries was only $929m, less than
>the amount spent on debt service. By 2002, this had increased to $1306m -
>more than twice what is being paid to foreign creditors;
>
>2. Before debt relief, more than twice as much was being spent on debt
>service as on health. Now, health spending has risen by 70%, and is now one
>third higher than spending on debt repayments
>
>3. There is no evidence that debt relief is being used to fuel military
>expenditures. In the countries reviewed, we found that military expenditure
>has remained more or less constant, at around 2% of GDP, from 1998 to 2002.
>
>Clearly, monitoring spending on health and education spending is problematic
>due to poor budgetary and accounting systems in many countries. We would
>also like to expand our survey to all HIPCs in the long run. However,
as a
>prelimary result, our figures show that HIPC has had a very positive impact
>on social spending in Africa.
>
>For a full copy of the report, please see
>http://www.jubileeresearch.org/analysis/reports/reliefworks.pdf
>
>Comments welcome!
>
>Best wishes,
>
>Romilly
>
>Romilly Greenhill
>Economist
>Jubilee Research at the New Economics Foundation
>Cinnamon House,
>6-8 Cole St,
>London SE1 4YH
>
>Tel: (44) 0207 089 2878
>E-mail: rgreenhill.jubilee@neweconomics.org