Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-01-12-Speech-3-217"
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"en.20050112.11.3-217"2
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".
Madam President, I am glad we are having this debate today on debt relief. It is vital that even as we pay necessary and proper attention to tsunami relief, we also remain focused on the wider and longer-term issue of poverty reduction and the millennium development goals.
Debt relief is key to achieving the millennium development goals. In the past, the measure used to calculate whether debt was sustainable was a calculation of debt payment against export income, but the really crucial question is how much of the national budget is being used to repay debt. In many African countries, debt service payments still take up a larger share of the budget than health services. In Ghana, for example, 11% of government spending goes into repaying debt, while only 9% is spent on health.
If we want debt relief to contribute to achieving the millennium development goals, then we need to acknowledge that debt is unsustainable wherever it prevents a country financing its poverty reduction programmes. It follows that international money to fund debt relief must be in addition to, and not instead of, aid. I am very concerned that the United States envisages a reduction in aid budgets to fund debt cancellation. In fact, debt cancellation needs to go hand-in-hand with an increase in aid and the ALDE resolution includes a renewed pledge that Member States give 0.7% of GDP as overseas development assistance.
It also follows that debt reduction can only contribute to achieving the millennium development goals if it takes place under good governance. Nothing will be achieved if the money saved through debt relief is spent by a corrupt dictator on expensive palaces or, even worse, on attack helicopters to terrorise a section of the population.
The governments of developing countries have a responsibility to invest in their own people, but we in the European institutions have a responsibility to make sure that flexible mechanisms for debt relief are available."@en1
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"Hall (ALDE )"1
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