Burundi's Debt Cancelled

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Burundi’s Debt Canceled
February 12th, 2009 at 11:32 am | posted by Andreas.Huebers


On January 29, Burundi reached its debt-canceling “completion point”!
This is the final stage of the Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative
(HIPC) which seeks to cancel highly indebted countries’ loans. After a
long process, Burundi, a small country in Eastern Africa will now
receive irrevocable cancellation of a little less than $ 1 billion in
debt. This is composed of $833 million under HIPC and $105 million
under the Multilateral Debt initiative (MDRI). MDRI is only accessible
to countries that have reached the HIPC-completion point and it
complements HIPC, which is basically focused on bilateral debt.

Burundi has improved the quality of its fiscal and debt management.
The funds that no longer need to be paid to international financial
institutions can now go towards economic and social recovery of the
country, which is needed to stabilize its post-conflict society.