Despite multilateral initiatives such as the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), in 2007 the world’s developing countries still spent a combined total of approximately USD 1.5 billion every day on external debt servicing. Amongst their number are the poorest countries in the world; these low income countries spent around USD 34 million every day on external debt servicing.1 In the current global financial crisis, many of the countries which have benefited from debt relief in recent years now face substantial risk of new debt distress.

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