Seeking Evidence - UK Parliamentary Hearing on Africa
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21st September 2004
Dear Colleague,
In preparation for the UK hosting of the G8 Summit in 2005, the
All Party Parliamentary Group on Heavily Indebted Poor Countries
(APPG on HIPC) is working with the UK-based NGO Jubilee Debt
Campaign to facilitate a Parliamentary Hearing on Africa and the
international debt crisis.
We are seeking to take oral evidence from witnesses such as Af-
rican Parliamentarians and representatives of the World Bank,
the IMF and government departments on the 20th and 27th October
and wish to inform those sessions with your and other's views.
With your evidence and that which we collect by the end October
we will write a Parliamentary Report - to be launched in Decem-
ber 2004 - that will feed into the Commission for Africa.
As co-Chairs of the APPG on HIPC, we would therefore ask you to
contribute to this work by providing us with written evidence on
Africa and debt; particularly concentrating on what needs to
happen to tackle poverty in the HIPCs, so that we can feed that
into the commission. The key questions we wish to tackle are en-
closed.
Please do write on some or all of the issues involved where you
have particular expertise. Because of our timescale we will not
be able to analyse voluminous responses, so brevity would be ap-
preciated together with links to research or contacts should we
need more detail. Information will be made public unless you
tell us otherwise. We are working under a very tight timetable,
so the deadline for receiving written submissions is 29th of Oc-
tober. However, responses before the 20th would be particularly
useful as we may then be able to use the information you give us
in the hearings.
If you know of others who would like to contribute written evi-
dence, do please pass on this request to them also. To send us
written evidence and/or get further details, please contact our
Co-ordinator
Zuleikha Salim Said
Room 365 Portcullis House
London SW1A 0AA, UK
Tel: + 44-20-7219-1429
mailto:salimsaidz@parliament.uk
With thanks and best wishes.
Yours sincerely,
Julia Drown MP Ann McKechin MP
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Key questions to be considered
1. What is the current status of debt and debt relief in Africa?
2. How effective is debt relief as a tool of poverty reduction?
This would include the costs of financing further debt relief,
case studies of the impact already achieved and a specific con-
sideration of the effectiveness of debt relief in comparison to
aid loans or grants.
3. Is the HIPC process delivering effective debt relief? High-
light what has been achieved, examine criticisms of HIPC, par-
ticularly conditionalities; consider the fairness of debt relief
(in terms of countries that don't qualify for debt relief) on
the basis of needs-based financing.
4. How can debt relief processes effectively take into account
issues of conflict and corruption, ensuring that debt relief
genuinely benefits people who are poor?
5. Parliamentary dimension - how has the debt crisis and HIPC
process affected democratic institutions? How can debt relief
reinforce democracy?
6. How do we interpret the latest US proposal for 100 per cent
cancellation?
7. What are the appropriate mechanisms for financing future debt
relief? This would consider why and how the IMF/World Bank
should consider and afford multilateral debt cancellation; exam-
ine the proposal for unilateral cancellation of a countries'
share of multilateral debt, as proposed by the Jubilee Debt Cam-
paign's Call for Change proposal; highlight the £ for £ effi-
ciency of multilateral debt cancellation and the moral hazard
involved; there would also be a brief consideration of alterna-
tive sources of finance for debt relief, e.g. the Tobin Tax and
IFF.
8. What are the key issues for the process of further debt re-
lief? This question would include issues of the assessment of
debt sustainability (human development / export earnings /
other?); key factors in the process for agreeing new lending;
issues around insolvency in relation to sovereign bankruptcy and
the Jubilee framework; which is best for the future - loans or
grants?
The Bretton Woods Project
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