A group of charities is appealing to Jersey to close the loophole in UK law which is allowing New York based vulture fund FG Hemisphere to sue the Democratic Republic of Congo for $100 million. A media investigation has exposed the hedge fund’s alleged illegal acquisition of DRC’s debt, forcing the second poorest country in the world to pay millions of dollars in interest repayments and fees on the original debt. Read more on the campaign here.

DFI spoke at the UNCTAD Debt Management Conference in Geneva on the links between debt management and public financial management, urging a reversal of the marginalisation of debt management in the absence of debt crisis, and a greater focus on funding decentralised regional and in-country capacity-building. For DFI's presentation click here. The conference also provided a forum for bilateral meetings with many of DFI's implementing partners and the countries we are assisting on debt management capacity-building. Overall, the conference focussed on debt restructuring and responsible borrowing/lending as well as debt management. Click here to see the programme and papers.

A recent joint WB and IMF report on HIPC Initiative aims to accomplish three objectives: 1) provide an update on the status of implementation, impact, and costs of the HIPC Initiative and MDRI; 2) discontinuation of the status of implementation reports and 3) further ring-fencing of countries eligible for debt relief .

Under the IMF’s Extended Credit Facility’s three year arrangement, Côte d’Ivoire is to be relieved of its external public debt worth US$615.9 million. Another US$8 million for interim assistance has been approved under the HIPC Initiative. This decision should help Côte d’Ivoire implement its reforms plan while recovering from recent social and political unrest and economic decline, and reach the Completion Point of the enhanced HIPC initiative. Details and background are available in the IMF press release.

DFI participated at the Development Cooperation Forum meeting in Luxembourg, speaking on the need for strong global mutual accountability mechanisms on development cooperation, without which developing countries cannot hold donors accountable. DFI's presentation is available here. For the conference programme and other papers (mainly on the role of aid in catalysing microfinance, investment and tax revenue) click here. 

A Debt Sustainability Workshop was held in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. The objective of the workshop was to enhance capacity in debt sustainability for staff from the Public Debt Department, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Budget, and the Central Bank. About thirty staff were trained using the methodology developed by the World Bank and the IMF (Debt Sustainability Framework for Low Income Countries) in order to draft the country's debt sustainability report.

Two DFI experts have conducted their final two missions in Guinea in keeping with the national capacity building programme in aid management, and audit and control. After launching a training programme for Ministry of Finance executives and public investment experts, the consultants are now finalising a national manual of procedures for the management and control of public investment projects.

DSAs results are available on the IMF site. The results for Benin, Cameroon, Kyrgyz Republic, Lao, Liberia, Mauritania, Moldova, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Senegal, Tajikistan and Tanzania are similar to those of the previous DSA. Ghana and Togo have improved and Cote d'Ivoire and Republic of Congo have worsened their status. The results for Zimbabwe show that the country is in debt distress.

DFI helped to facilitate a technical meeting of Commonwealth and OIF country and secretariat officials, held at Wilton Park in the UK, to raise awareness and discuss the practicalities of various types of innovative financing instruments and mechanisms. DFI gave a presentation on public revenue-raising measures such as Financial Transaction Taxes and taxes on aviation and shipping fuels. The meeting followed the recent Commonwealth and OIF Finance Ministers' meetings which discussed these issues (see 22 September).

A workshop organised at the BWI Annual Meetings agreed on the creation of a network to monitor and analyse the Financial Stability Board (FSB Watch Network) to complement the FSB Watch website. Various participants including DFI agreed to mobilise key stakeholder groups (governments, UN agencies, trade unions, CSOs, expert researchers) to support the network, which will operate in coalition with networks already working on key issues (governance, transparency, commodity speculation, tax havens, bank regulation, debt workouts). The workshop was part of the joint AERC-Brookings-DFI-New Rules project on FSB funded by the Ford, C.S. Mott and Connect US Foundations.