PORTUGAL’S GOVERNMENT recently announced that it will participate in the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) for the world’s poorest countries, which was recently implemented following measures announced in 2005 by the G8 group of industrialized countries to tackle world poverty.
Portugal is to provide 65.1 million euros to the International Development Association (IDA) of the World Bank and another 55.2 million euros to the African Development Fund (ADF). The country’s contributions to the IDA will begin in 2007 and last until 2044, with instalments to the ADF starting later on this year and continuing over a period of 48 years. MDRI offers total cancellation of multilateral debts of poor countries to the World Bank, IMF and African Development Bank.
The debt relief initiative came into force on July 1 and involves 19 countries, including Portugal’s former southeast African colony Mozambique, which had its USD 1.3 billion debt to the World Bank pardoned this week.
