The finance ministers of the G8, the world's eight richest countries, have agreed a deal to relieve the debts of 18 of the poorest countries in the world.
The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the African Development Fund will write off all of the money owed to them by the selected countries.
The countries are Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.
The deal, devised by the United Kingdom, aims to free up government revenue for domestic spending on things such as education and health services.
The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Fund will write off all of the money owed to them by selected nations. A total of $40bn will be cleared, which will save debt repayments of $1.5bn a year.
Another twenty countries may become eligible to have their debts cleared if they meet targets for reducing corruption and better government.
Charities have said that the debts of 62 countries need to be cleared if the UN wants to meet its target of halving world poverty.
Fourteen of the countries to receive debt relief are in sub-Saharan Africa.
The alleviation of third world debt has been a lifelong ambition of Gordon Brown, the current UK chancellor, and he has used all of his political power and status to push for this agreement in the G8 group.
Source: WikiNews
I'd like to draw attention to the fact that none of those countries are economically viable or are in possession of useful resources. As such, there would be no point in keeping them in debt, and doing so would only make the G8 look bad.
As for the IMF relegating funds for education, I'd like to offer a "bitches, please." There's no way in hell that the IMF, which favors economic growth over societal development, because such are the sentiments of its majority voting bloc (e.g. the States), will ever go for that. There will most likely be severe austerity measures enforced. Expect to see headlines about free trade zones springing up more and more in those areas, provided that corporations are insane and insensitive enough to build factories in the sub-Saharan sun.