Debt waiver is key to recovery from war, govt tells donors

With more than half of Liberia’s children out of school and all but five percent of the country’s health centres flattened by war, the government is calling for a waiver of the country’s huge external debt to help it quickly recover from war. At a two-day conference of donors and financial experts that wound up on Thursday, the new peacetime government pledged to continue on the path of economic reform but said it was unable to pay back Liberia’s external debt arrears of US $3.5 billion. "There is a need for a debt waiver for Liberia, and in order to do this the government must carry out a reform of its economic and monetary programs and constantly engage our international financial partners to assist us in putting together policies and programs that would qualify us for the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiatives," Finance Minister Antoinette Sayeh said on Thursday. Debt relief is to be a highlight of talks at a donor conference on Liberia in Washington in October, but World Bank official Matt Karlson said a waiver would entail proof of continuing economic reform. "We have to look into arrears clearance, because the government cannot pay its debts, but in order to qualify, the government must continue the encouraging steps it has been taking in six months in office by strictly adhering to internationally acceptable benchmarks in its management of public funds,” Karlson said. Speaking at the gathering, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said a waiver would enable her administration to fulfil its development agenda, including restoring basic social services such as schools, rehabilitating damaged health facilities and repairing roads networks. "With more than half of our children out of school and a shortage of trained teachers, we intend to spent our time and resources in educational development,” Sirleaf said. “We also have a situation of 95 percent of our 325 health centres totally or partially damaged by war and there are presently 34 doctors in the country out of 400 trained in the 1980s before the war.” Sirleaf said that only 10 percent of the population of 3.4 million had access to health care and that the government’s immediate plan was to raise this to about 50 percent. The government’s just-released US $120 million budget provides for 7.99 percent of spending to go to education and 5.62 percent to health. The shattered legal system and new post-war security forces, including the police, are the third biggest item, accounting for 5.82 percent of spending. But the government also plans to allocate major budget resources to rehabilitating damaged infrastructures. Liberia’s appalling roads network is becoming a major hindrance, with aid agencies notably complaining this is slowing assistance to some parts of the country. The head of the World Food Program in Liberia, Louis Imbleau, told IRIN in an interview this week that bad roads were becoming a serious problem in efforts to deliver food assistance to areas where half of the people were living in conditions of chronic malnutrition. "We have limited access by road in the southeast in delivering food. The southeastern region in Liberia is very vulnerable,” Imbleau said. "We have just shipped a consignment of food by ship, but the food is still in the port and the road condition means we are not able to move into towns for delivery," he said. "There is a situation of chronic malnutrition as high as 50 percent.” The UN refugee agency UNHCR has also reported problems for Liberian returnees, saying some are stuck on bad muddy roads on their return home. As of 30 June, UNHCR had assisted 71,267 Liberian refugees to return home from various countries. Fifty percent of all returnees came from camps in Guinea, while 43 percent came from Cote d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone. Nearly 60 percent of the return has been to Lofa County, which had the highest level of displacement of refugees and IDPs country-side. Maryland County is second with 11 percent, followed by Montserrado County, including Monrovia, with 9 percent of total returns. At least half of the Liberian population was displaced at one time or another, often on multiple occasions, during the Liberian conflict. Since the start of the peace process in late 2003, an estimated 600,000 Liberians have returned home from displacement both within and outside the country’s borders. as/ccr/cs