Paris Club calls on other creditors to cancel claims on Haiti
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The France-chaired Paris Club of government lenders on Tuesday called on other bilateral creditors to cancel debt claims on Haiti, as a support to the reconstruction of the quake-devastated country.
The 19-member informal financial group announced in a statement that "considering the financing needs that Haiti will face in reconstructing the country," the club urged "other bilateral creditors also to urgently provide full debt cancellation to Haiti."
According to the statement, the club members had decided in July to write-off their claims on Haiti, amounting to some 214 million U.S. dollars.
Some of the industrialized countries have already finalized legal process to implement the commitment and some are yet to finish.
Haiti's bilateral debt outside the Paris Club amounted to 1.67 billion U.S. dollars by the end of September 2008, according to data of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
In the wake of the quake, the World Bank and the IMF have respectively announced emergency loans of 100 million U.S. dollars for the poor Caribbean country as reconstruction fund.
