DeniAfrica

Inter Press Service News Agency states that:

A new report by the self-auditing arm of the World Bank has painted a grim picture of the results of a decade-long plan by the Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to give the world’s poorest nations debt relief.
The report by the Washington-based Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) says that in half the countries that received debt relief under the programme known as the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, debt has in fact climbed back up to where it was before the debt relief plan.
So far, the HIPC initiative has eased 19 billion dollars of debt in 18 countries, halving their debt ratios. However, the IEG found that in 11 of the 13 countries the report studies, and which graduated from the programme that qualifies them to start receiving debt forgiveness, called the completion-point, external debt has actually risen.