Exceptional aid for highly-indebted ACP States

This Decision provides broader and faster debt relief for highly-indebted poor States from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP).

ACT

Decision No 1/1999 (PDF) of the ACP-EC Council of Ministers of 8 December 1999 on exceptional aid for highly-indebted ACP States.

SUMMARY

This decision comes under the framework of the international debt-relief initiative for highly-indebted poor countries (HIPC), launched in 1996 and extended during the G7 summit in Cologne in June 1999 in order to offer broader and faster debt relief for HIPCs.

The Decision is also based on the Commission's Communication of 26 October 1999 on a Community participation in the initiative (HIPC).

Unallocated programmable resources from the eighth European Development Fund (EDF) are used in the form of grants for the following purposes:

• meeting the outstanding debt and debt-servicing obligations to the first ACP countries (before 2001) which qualify under the HIPC initiative (EUR 320 million);
• contributing to the overall financing of the HIPC initiative by providing up to EUR 680 million for the initiative Trust Fund managed by the World Bank.

For countries which qualify after 2001, the aid is supplemented from further available EDF resources.

The aid is mobilised on the basis of arrangements laid down by the Commission in accordance with the provisions of the ACP Convention. There exist special arrangements within the framework of general coordination with other donors to use the new budgetary margin of manoeuvre for the development of social sectors and for poverty alleviation, in line with the new development strategy of the international community focusing on poverty alleviation.

This Decision applies only to ACP countries. Other measures are envisaged for non-ACP countries.

RELATED ACTS

Decision No 2/2001 (PDF ) of the ACP-EC Council of Ministers of 20 December 2001 on settling all ACP HIPC LDCs' "special loans" remaining after full application of HIPC debt alleviation mechanisms [Official Journal L 56 of 27.2.2002].

Decision No 3/2002 (PDF ) of the ACP-EC Council of Ministers of 23 December 2002 on the reallocation of unallocated resources as well as uncommitted interest subsidies from the Eighth European Development Fund (EDF) [Official Journal L 59 of 4.3.2003].

Last updated: 30.07.2007