The results of this practice are clear to see: of the original 8 Millennium Development Goals, only 2 have been met, with serious doubts regarding the possibility of meeting the other 6. The track record of the current development agenda is very disappointing [2].
So, the issue is not to add new elements to the framework, but to assess if the elements that are already present are working, and if they are not, can they be eliminated. The one element that stands out on that regard is Debt, as an economic, social and political development policy tool.
Since the implementation of the Marshall Plan in Europe, policy circles have been burdened with the notion that injections of capital and fresh financial resources constitute one of the basic components of development. Based on this premise, the World Bank has tried throughout the last 69 years to help countries to borrow their way into development. In many cases, the living conditions of hundreds of millions of people in the World have been degraded as a result of the debt based policies forced on them by the World Bank and the IMF with the complicity of their own governments [3].
- Daniel Munevar
Instead of providing developing countries with fresh resources, the debt system has forced them to give priority to payments to creditors over the provision of basic social services. According to World Bank data, in 2010 alone, developing countries paid out $184 billion on debt service, about three times the annual resources required for the fulfillment of the MDGs. Even more troublesome, between 1985 and 2010 net public debt flows to developing countries, that is the difference between debt inflows and debt payments, have reached -$530 billion |4|. To place this number in context, this is the equivalent of five Marshall Plans.
Throughout this time, debt has been used by the IFI´s and creditor countries alike to push developing countries to adopt policies that, if anything, prevent them from securing minimum living conditions for their populations. From the privatization and downsizing of public services, to opening internal markets to imports which has seriously undermined food sovereignty, the policies enforced upon developing countries have crippled their capacity to achieve their own internal development.
- Eric Toussaint
Therefore, if something needs to be done, it is to cancel the public debts of developing countries. Contrary to what skeptics say, this debt represents no more than a drop in the bucket: in 2010, it reached $1.6 trillion (total public external debt), or less than 5% of the resources devoted by the US Government to bail-out the banks |5|.
As CADTM has advocated during the last 24 years, let’s be rid of it.