Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Countries Research Articles

IS THERE MORAL HAZARD IN THE HEAVILY INDEBTED POOR COUNTRIES (HIPC) INITIATIVE DEBT RELIEF PROCESS?

The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) were created by the IMF and World Bank to help low-income countries reduce their debt burden and to facilitate reaching the Millennium Development Goals. After entering he decision point of the HIPC Initiative stage, countries receive interim aid while following a strategic path to improve their macroeconomic stability via structural reforms. Many countries reached the completion point of the HIPC Initiative stage within a few years, receiving a substantial amount of debt relief. Other countries remained in the interim period for almost a decade. We explore the relationship between the level of corruption in HIPC countries and the length of time between the decision and the completion point. We use survival-time models to estimate the effect of various characteristics of the countries on the probability that each country will exit the interim period. The results show that countries with lower corruption and better rule of law complete the HIPC process faster.

Macroeconomic Volatility and Capital Flights in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Dynamic Panel Estimation of some Selected HIPC Countries

Abstract For several years, illicit financial outflows though unobservable have remained rampant in the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) sub-region. This paper examines whether macroeconomic volatilities as perceived by domestic investors in the sub-region have any influence on these outflows taking some selected Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) and dataset for the period 1990 to 2012 as the case study. In addition, the study employs a Generalized Autoregression Heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model and Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag model in its estimation. The outcomes of the econometric investigation, which reflects the current situation in the sub-region, support the view that domestic investors will withdraw their investments and other financial holdings from the domestic economy if they perceived present and future government policies to be volatile. These results suggest that government in HIPC Countries in SSA should focus on stabilising their macroeconomic and political situation if they want to reduce the outflow of domestic capital.

The impact of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative on growth and investment in Africa

Between 1996 and 2014, 30 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries benefited from debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI). The architects of the HIPC initiative and MDRI posited that these programs would spur growth and investment. This paper exploits the variability of participation in the HIPC initiative and MDRI across time and country, in order to identity the effect of participation on growth and investment. I find that the decision point and post-completion point periods of the enhanced HIPC initiative are associated with a 1.762 percentage point and 3.139 percentage point increase in public investment, respectively. The impact is higher in countries with low access to international capital markets. The enhanced HIPC initiative increases private investment by 1.838 percentage points during the post-completion point period in countries with low access to international capital, for approximately two years, but has no effect on growth or foreign direct investment. I find no effect of the original HIPC initiative or MDRI on growth, private investment, public investment or foreign direct investment. I find no heterogeneous impact of the enhanced HIPC initiative on growth and foreign direct investment by level of indebtedness, access to international capital markets, or institutional quality. As the measures of institutional quality have barely changed between 1996 and 2014 in HIPC countries, the results of this paper suggest that without a strong improvement in institutional quality, debt relief is unlikely to boost investment and growth in Africa. Possible future debt relief in SSA countries should be associated with a component directly aimed at improving institutional quality. If an improvement of institutional quality is not feasible in the short run, debt relief in SSA countries should aim to support public investment.

Africa: Out of debt, into fiscal space? Dynamic fiscal impact of the debt relief initiatives on African Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs)

After two debt relief initiatives launched in 1996 (the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, HIPC) and in 1999 (The enhanced HIPC initiative), the G7 decided to go further by cancelling (most of) the remaining multilateral debt for these HIPC countries through the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI, 2005). Building on earlier literature that tries to assess the fiscal response effects of HIPC debt relief, we extend this assessment by explicitly including the fiscal response effects of MDRI debt relief, and by using an extended dataset and alternative econometric techniques, in order to have sufficient hindsight and better tackle methodological issues such as country-specific effects. We confirm earlier findings that debt relief, and especially the enhanced HIPC initiative, has had a positive impact on recipient country total domestic revenue and public investment (as percentage of GDP). Additionally, thanks to our large observation span, we also observe that the MDRI led to a significant increase in current primary expenditures and domestic revenue ratios, although these effects are on average smaller than the HIPC Initiative ones.

The Next Step in African Development: Aid, Investment, or Another Round of Debt?

Amidst intense debt relief, and alongside dramatically improved governance, investment and growth increased substantially across Africa during the past decade. This paper interprets the timing of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, launched by the IMF and World Bank in the late 1990s, as a natural experiment to see whether these positive trends were specific to Africa, or specific to HIPC countries, as well as whether debt relief itself manifests deeper structural shifts in economic governance. As many HIPC countries are presently raising their external public debt levels, we question whether these loans would be a “good kind of debt” that leads to investment and development or the beginning of a new debt cycle leading to future needs of another round of debt relief programs. Data on external debt and capital development for 46 countries of sub-Saharan Africa and six other HIPC countries outside of Africa is used to evaluate structural breaks and parameter stability in a longitudinal panel analysis. Incorporating an identification strategy that isolates the debt relief initiatives from endogenous improvements to economic governance, we find that they had a statistically significant impact on foreign investment flows to Africa.

Will World Bank and IMF Lending Lead to HIPC-IV? Debt Déjà-Vu All Over Again

Four years ago, the G-7 pushed through an unprecedented initiative forcing the international financial institutions to cancel 100 percent of their outstanding debt claims on the world’s poorest countries. Through the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), these heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs) stand to receive up to $60 billion in debt relief over time. Moreover, the World Bank, African Development Bank, and IMF shareholders approved a new debt sustainability framework to govern future lending decisions and prevent the need for yet another round of systemic debt relief. All parties emerged from these landmark agreements confident that the dragon of unsustainable debt finally had been slain. However, several unsettling trends raise serious questions about the finality of these actions. First, World Bank and AfDB lending disbursement volumes to these very same HIPC countries remain very high, and nearly the same as compared to pre-MDRI. Emergency IMF lending in response to the global economic crisis has compounded the situation. Second, IMF and World Bank growth projections for HIPCs remain overly rosy compared to actual and historical performance. Our new dataset of IMF growth projections suggests a structural optimism of at least one percentage point per year. Third, HIPCs continue to experience significant volatility in country performance measures that has a direct impact on their ability to carry debt sustainably. Taken together, these findings suggest that donor countries should re-examine the issue of debt sustainability in low-income countries and the system for determining the appropriate grant/loan mix. The upcoming IDA and AfDF replenishment negotiations present a timely opportunity to do so. Absent assertive and corrective action, the international community may be faced with the prospect of a HIPC IV agreement in the not too distant future.

Consequences of Debt Relief Initiatives in the 1990s

In this paper I investigate the effects of recent debt relief initiatives such as the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Debt Initiative of 1996 on resource flows to developing countries. Focusing on a sample of low-income countries, I concentrate on the following questions. First, is the HIPC initiative selective in the sense of rewarding improved policies in HIPC countries with higher transfers? Measuring improvement directly with dummy variables representing progress in the initiative, I find that good macroeconomic management does not seem to matter in terms of the level of resource transfers and foreign aid received by a HIPC country. Second, have HIPCs and non-HIPCs experienced reductions in aid inflows (other than debt relief) in the 1990s and early 2000s? My estimates suggest that countries classified as HIPCs received higher (official and aggregate) net transfers than non-HIPC countries in the first half of the 1990s. These differences persist after 1996, however, at a lower level. Looking at net official development assistance, differences between HIPC countries and non-HIPC countries persist throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, with higher levels of aid going to HIPC countries. Third, have the debt relief initiatives in the 1990s provided additional resources to low-income countries? Confirming findings in earlier literature, my results suggest that aid flows have not changed significantly in response to debt relief.

Health Expenditures under the HIPC Debt Initiative

One of the goals of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt initiative is to provide additional resources for basic health care to the population of eligible developing countries. In this paper I investigate the effect of debt relief on per capita health expenditure in a sample of developing countries while controlling for other factors used in the literature. I find that debt relief has - at the margin - little or no effect on health expenditure in countries that are classified as HIPC. The level of health expenditures in HIPC countries, however, is significantly higher than in other developing countries. On the other hand, countries not classified as HIPC increase their per capita health expenditures more than proportionally if they receive debt relief. This result is surprising considering that per capita amounts of debt relief provided to HIPC countries are on average significantly higher than those to Non-HIPC countries.

Can Debt Relief Buy Growth?

The purpose of the paper is twofold. First, I investigate whether numerous debt initiatives during the 1980s and 1990s have had a significant effect on economic growth rates in developing countries in general. The major initiatives during that time period were negotiated as bilateral agreements under the guidance of the Paris Club of Creditors. These agreements were complemented later on by the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt relief initiative in 1996 and its enhanced version in 1999. I find that, on average, debt relief has no effect on growth rates of developing countries. The second question I address in this paper is whether the effect on growth rates was different for different subsets of developing countries. I find that countries that are not classified as HIPC have benefited significantly from debt relief, whereas the growth rates of HIPC countries have been unaffected.

Hiccups for HIPCs? Implications of Debt Relief for Fiscal Sustainability and Monetary Policy

Abstract In this paper we discuss fiscal and monetary policy issues facing heavily-indebted poor countries (HIPCs) who receive debt reduction via the enhanced HIPC initiative. This debt relief program is distinguished from previous ones by its conditionality: freed resources must be used for poverty reduction. We argue that (i) this conditionality severely limits the extent to which the initiative provides significant debt relief; (ii) depending on the response of monetary policy to an increase in social spending there could be a short-run increase in inflation in HIPC countries and (iii) the keys to long-run fiscal sustainability in the HIPCs are significant fiscal reforms by their governments, and the effectiveness of their poverty reduction programs in raising growth.

Fiscal Sustainability in African HIPC Countries: A Policy Dilemma?

This paper looks at the link between fiscal policy and debt sustainability in a number of African countries participating in the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. The paper finds that, on the basis of current fiscal policies, debt levels will remain unsustainable even after these countries graduate from the HIPC Initiative. This finding has important policy implications. By the very requirements of the HIPC Initiative, these countries are expected to increase significantly their poverty-reducing expenditure-possibly resulting in weaker fiscal primary balances and worsening debt sustainability outlook. As offsetting fiscal tightening may not be viable, ensuring debt sustainability may thus require increased availability of (nondebt-creating) grants. Otherwise, debt sustainability in HIPC countries may prove elusive in the long term.

Fiscal Sustainability in African Hipc Countries: A Policy Dilemma?

This paper looks at the link between fiscal policy and debt sustainability in a number of African countries participating in the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. The paper finds that, on the basis of current fiscal policies, debt levels will remain unsustainable even after these countries graduate from the HIPC Initiative. This finding has important policy implications. By the very requirements of the HIPC Initiative, these countries are expected to increase significantly their poverty-reducing expenditure - possibly resulting in weaker fiscal primary balances and worsening debt sustainability outlook. As offsetting fiscal tightening may not be viable, ensuring debt sustainability may thus require increased availability of (nondebt-creating) grants. Otherwise, debt sustainability in HIPC countries may prove elusive in the long term.