This gap represents around 2 million additional child deaths in 2015 in HIPC countries. Debt continues to suck resources from the fight against poverty, and contributes to child death rates which are more than 20 times that in industrialised countries. Debt relief provided is not enough. This leaves debt service still more than twice spending on primary education, in a country where more than two million children are not in school. Problems with financing HIPC2.
Promises are one thing, delivery is another.
It is vital that IMF and World Bank programmes support, rather than undermine, poverty reduction goals. In this new process, IMF and World Bank programme design must demonstrate trade-offs around policy choices. This is supposed to include re-design and compensatory measures for those adversely affected by choices. For instance, trade liberalisation can be sequenced in ways that assist the poor, providing access to cheap inputs, while delaying liberalisation of other areas until compensatory measures have been implemented, such as road construction to increase access to markets. Little, however, has changed in current practice.