But when many of the poorest are also laboring under weight of the debts they owe to the international community, we owe them a fresh look at the way we try to help. More than fifty years of development assistance has taught us that where countries are truly committed to inclusive, enduring growth - international support can make a powerful difference. At best, such failed support leaves countries no better off than before. At worst, it traps the country, and us, in a cycle of lending which is devoted in part to assuring that past loans can be repaid. At these meetings we expect broad agreement on how to finance this initiative, with a central reliance on mobilizing the IMF and World Bank's own resources.
Debt relief is only a means to a much higher objective.
We believe that most important of all to the success of this effort will be the establishment of a new framework for the international community's efforts to combat poverty - one that is centered around the belief that countries themselves must take the lead in poverty reduction efforts if lasting change is to be achieved. Under our new approach, governments would need forcefully to demonstrate, at the highest political levels, a commitment to poverty reduction and the reforms and domestic funding needed to give effect to such commitment. A growth-oriented, integrated poverty reduction plan, drawn up by the recipient countries themselves, with the support of the World Bank and IMF, and centered around measurable and monitorable targets for infant mortality, literacy and other key indicators. A requirement that the recipients of debt relief earmark the savings from debt relief for genuinely additional spending on poverty reduction. Concrete steps to raise transparency - for example, through mandatory publication of the national budget and new mechanisms to monitor and improve the quality of public spending.