Paris Club releases comprehensive data on its claims

By Jennifer Chiou

New York, Nov. 26 - The Paris Club announced that it has decided to publish the amount of its claims on foreign countries for the first time since its inception more than 50 years ago.

According to a news release, this move is intended to enhance transparency on debt data and to encourage all creditors, in particular major developing countries' creditors, to engage in a comprehensive debt reporting and disclosure process.

The total of Paris Club claims, excluding late interest, amounts to $330.2 billion, of which $172.5 billion makes up official development assistance claims and $157.7 billion are non-official development assistance claims, the release said.

Around 10% of these claims are owed by heavily indebted poor countries, the Paris Club said, noting that it intends to cancel most of these claims on countries that implement poverty-reducing and other economic reforms under the enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative and through additional bilateral debt relief efforts.

Nearly one-third of the Paris Club claims amount is held on emerging market countries from Asia, Africa and South America that are members of the G20.

The initiative was announced as part of the Paris Club contribution to the Doha Conference on Financing for Development that was sent to the United Nations in mid-September.

Formed in 1956, the Paris Club is an informal group of creditor governments from major industrialized countries.

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