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PSE Forum: World Debt - Did you know?

The amount of money that is owed by African countries to Britain is roughly equal to the amount of money that everyone in Britain spends each year on chocolate.

Despite all the money that the poor countries are paying to the rich countries and the IMF each year, the debts of the poor countries are actually growing rather than reducing. This is because interest keeps being added to the loans.

Some countries have actually paid back the money they originally borrowed several times over - yet are still in debt.

In 1994 the rich countries gave about £34 billion in aid to the poor countries – but the poor countries paid over £126 billion (ie four times as much as they received in aid) to the rich countries in debt repayments. (Think of this another way; have you ever worn a red nose or done something else for Comic Relief? The amount of money that Comic Relief raises in one day - 24 hours - to fund poverty reduction programmes in Africa flows back in just six hours in debt repayment. That doesn’t mean you should stop raising money, without it the problem would be far worse, but debt cancellation is a more powerful way of fighting poverty than aid.)

After Hurricane Mitch caused huge destruction in Central America, many countries agreed to give aid to help rebuild the damaged houses, hospitals and schools. About £120 million of the aid money given was instead used to repay debts to the IMF.

If the debts that are owed by the Philippines were repaid at a rate of £55,000 a day, it would take 1307 years for the debts to be repaid.

In 1979, 99 per cent of children in Tanzania went to primary school. By 1990 this figure had fallen to 63 per cent, largely because of cuts in education spending by the Tanzanian government as a result of the debt problem.

Because of disease, life expectancy in Zambia is dropping below 40 years. During 2001, Zambia will have to spend £121 million on debt repayments – money that could be spent on health care, medicines and hospitals.

In Uganda in 1995, £1.60 per person was spent on health care, but £19 was spent on debt repayments.

During the famines that have taken place in Ethiopia in recent years it has been possible to buy food produced in Ethiopia in shops in Britain – because food is grown for export rather than for local people. (Earnings from these exports are then used to repay debts.)

Britain has owed the United States nearly £9 billion since the end of the first world war, that was borrowed to pay for aeroplanes, ships and weapons.