Honduras External Debt

According to World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, a definitive level of financial commitment has been secured. Commitments have been made by donors, which provide for the implementation of the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative of which Honduras will directly benefit. Additional debt relief funds will enable the proper channeling of resources to the specific programs in need. This will help the poor of Honduras to have access to better education, health services, and safe drinking water, which helps prevent the outbreak of epidemics causing a series of unfortunate and untimely deaths.

There are countries that have reached the completion point, or have ‘graduated’, with the help of the HIPC Initiative. They were found to be eligible for extra debt relief under the MDRI programs. The MDRI relief amount received by Honduras so far, stands at US$1.185 billion. This is in addition to the US$108 million of the IDA debt relief that was committed in reference to the HIPC initiative.

The assistance provided under the MDRI initiative provided a slew of additional resources that helped in the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Honduras has been making a great deal of progress, and is expected to meet three MDGs based on the current trends that run until the end of the year 2015. The MDGs include universal primary enrollment, reduction in maternal mortality, as well as mortality in the population to whom quality water still remains inaccessible. The rate of progress needs to be higher if Honduras is to meet the MDGs in additional areas such as the reduction of extreme poverty, malnutrition, and infant mortality.

The Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) came into place on July 1, 2006. It cancelled the International Development Association (IDA) debt for countries that have been facing extreme poverty over decades, and have incurred a situation where it has become impossible to move forward. The IDA is said to have provided a sum of US$37 billion in debt relief funds over the next 40 years.