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afrol News, 17 July - Mauritania is achieving a major reduction in its foreign debt from one creditor after another after the country achieved its structural reform aims. Today, the African Development Bank (ADB) approved a relief of up to 80 percent of Mauritania's annual debt service obligations to the Bank. In a statement released today, ADB says it had "approved debt relief amounting to ... US$ 90.69 million to Mauritania," which reached its completion point in June 2002, under the enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. - With this debt relief, Mauritania will be released from up to 80 percent of its annual debt service obligations to the ADB during the interim period and will thus have more resources for poverty reduction, the Abidjan-based Bank says. The ADB's assistance strategy in Mauritania for poverty alleviation was focused on "human resources, natural resources and basic infrastructure development as well as institutional capacity building and consolidation of macro-economic reforms," the Bank's statement reads. Between 1998 and 2001, the ADB had financed 9 new operations for a total amount of about US$ 90.32 million in the social sector (36 percent), mining (33 percent), multi-sector (24 percent) and rural development (7 percent). Bank Group debt relief to Mauritania during the interim period July 2000 to June 2002 had amounted to US$ 19.58 million in nominal terms. Last week, the group of creditor nations known as the "Paris Club" announced its intention of reducing Mauritania's debt by 95 percent. This means a reduction from US$ 320 million to US$ 16 million, according to a Paris Club statement. The decision had been based in Mauritania's completion of the HIPC debt reduction process and the country's "determination to implement a broad-based and rigorous economic program." According to a June statement by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mauritania's total external debt already had been reduced by some 50 percent before the Paris Club and ADB announcements. Overall debt service payments had been cut substantially - from about US$ 88 million in 1998 (actually paid before HIPC assistance) to an average of US$ 35 million in 2003, IMF said.
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