19 U.S.C. § 3731 Sense of the Congress Regarding Comprehensive Debt Relief For the World's Poorest Countries

• Library: United States Statutes
• Edition: 2023 Edition
• Currency: Current through P.L. 118-19 (published on www.congress.gov on 10/06/2023)

(a) Findings

Congress makes the following findings:

(1) The burden of external debt has become a major impediment to economic growth and poverty reduction in many of the world's poorest countries.

(2) Until recently, the United States Government and other official creditors sought to address this problem by rescheduling loans and in some cases providing limited debt reduction.

(3) Despite such efforts, the cumulative debt of many of the world's poorest countries continued to grow beyond their capacity to repay.

(4) In 1997, the Group of Seven, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund adopted the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC), a commitment by the international community that all multilateral and bilateral creditors, acting in a coordinated and concerted fashion, would reduce poor country debt to a sustainable level.

(5) The HIPC Initiative is currently undergoing reforms to address concerns raised about country conditionality, the amount of debt forgiven, and the allocation of savings realized through the debt forgiveness program to ensure that the Initiative accomplishes the goals of economic growth and poverty alleviation in the world's poorest countries.

(b) Sense of the Congress

It is the sense of the Congress that-

(1) Congress and the President should work together, without undue delay and in concert with the international community, to make comprehensive debt relief available to the world's poorest countries in a manner that promotes economic growth and poverty alleviation;