The objective is to have 20 HIPCs reach their respective decision points under the new framework by the end of 2000. Uganda became the first HIPC country to achieve the completion point under the enhanced HIPC Initiative in early May 2000. Bolivia was expected to reach this point during the second half of 2000, to be followed by Benin, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Senegal and the United Republic of Tanzania in 2001, and Honduras and Mauritania in 2002. An important development in late 1999 and early 2000 has been the commitment by an increasing number of creditor countries to granting even deeper debt relief than under the Cologne terms. Country coverage, the timing of relief and the coverage of debts, for example, post-cutoff date debt, may also vary from creditor to creditor.
Relief also depends on legislative authorization for the release of funds.
The G-8 meeting in Okinawa, however, did not advance any major new initiative on debt similar to the Cologne debt initiative a year earlier. Overall progress is affected by the laborious resource mobilization for the initiative, which is funded essentially through voluntary contributions. Agreement on the use of IMF gold holdings to help finance the Fund's participation was reached at the Annual Meetings of the Bretton Woods institutions in September 1999. Pledges of substantial new bilateral contributions to IMF and World Bank HIPC trust funds have also been made. Yet full financing of the initiative is not yet assured.