2004 IS THE 60TH BIRTHDAY OF THE WORLD BANK AND IMF - BUT IT'S NO TIME CELEBRATE

As the World Bank and IMF celebrate their 60th birthdays, Jubilee Scotland invites you to write to Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for International Development and UK Director of the World Bank, asking him to:

1. Speed up the process of writing off debts for countries involved in the World Bank and IMF-led HIPC programme.
2. Increase the number of heavily indebted poor countries receiving debt relief under HIPC - only a quarter of severely indebted countries have been selected for HIPC.
3. Establish a process of debt relief that is not conditional on often-harmful policy reforms that perpetuate or deepen poverty and cause environmental degradation.
4. Amend the level of debt deemed to be sustainable by the World Bank and IMF. This currently stands at 150% or more of a country's annual exports, but both the World Bank and IMF have admitted that more than half the countries in the HIPC programme will not attain long-term debt sustainability.
The institutions' projections on which debt sustainability is based, especially export earnings, have long been criticised by debt campaigners as being unrealistically optimistic.
5. Make the decisions and practices of the World Bank and IMF more open and accountable to those in the South which are directly affected by them.
Send Correspondence to:
Hilary Benn MP
Secretary of State
DFID
1 Palace Street
London
SW1E 5HE

Supporting Information to inform your correspondence:
- Today, Africa's external debt stands at a staggering $333 billion - African nations pay £1.51 in debt service for every $1 received in aid.
- African nations have paid their debt three times over in the past ten years alone, yet they are three times as indebted as they were ten years ago.
- African countries are paying more on debt service than on health care for their people, regardless of debt relief- the average spending per person on debt service is £14 per person, while the average spending on health is less than $5 per person.
- External debt per capita for sub-Saharan Africa (not including South Africa) is $365, while GNP per capita is just $308.
- If governments invested in human development rather than debt payments, an estimated three million children would live beyond their fifth birthday and a million cases of malnutrition would be avoided.

Debt relief has benefited those countries which have received it:
- Mozambique has used money from reduced debt service payments to increase education spending from 12% to 20% of its budget which has led to an improvement in literacy rates.
- In Uganda, debt relief has played a key role in the government's success in reducing HIV infection rates by 40%.