World Bank announces US $3.3 billion debt relief under HIPC

Ethiopia has become the 13th country to obtain debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative of the World Bank and IMF, the World Bank reported on Thursday. It said in a statement that Ethiopia, which had made sufficient progress and taken the necessary steps to reach its completion point under the HIPC initiative, had qualified for total debt relief of approximately US $3.3 billion from its various creditors. "The track record of the Ethiopian authorities in policy and reform implementation has been strong, and the authorities have borrowed prudently despite being adversely affected by a severe drought and lower coffee prices," the statement said. It added that resources made available by debt relief under the HIPC initiative were being allocated to programmes that would tackle poverty and benefit poor people in Ethiopia, a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa. According to the World Bank, Ethiopia has a per capita GDP of about $100, making it one of the poorest countries in the world. Recent national household surveys found 44 percent of Ethiopians living below the basic-needs poverty line. The HIPC debt-relief initiative was launched in 1996 as an anti-poverty measure to relieve poor countries from heavy debt-service payments. The countries that have since qualified are Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Guyana, Mauritania, Mali, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda.