A chameleon called debt relief

Danny Cassimon and Dennis Essers

No 2013.01, IOB Working Papers from Universiteit Antwerpen, Institute of Development Policy (IOB)

Abstract: This paper critically reviews three decades of official creditors’ debt relief practice in Sub-Saharan Africa from a novel angle, i.e. along debt relief’s similarities with other aid modalities. We show that debt relief is a true ‘chameleon’ which mimics different sorts of aid, from traditional project aid to multi-year general budget support. The ‘colour’ of this chameleon depends on the embedded conditionality, alignment and the budgetary resource effect of particular debt relief interventions. We argue that characterising debt relief from an aid modality perspective is helpful in better understanding its widely varying performance track record and holds important policy lessons for designing future operations.

Keywords: debt relief; HIPC; MDRI; aid modalities; budget support; Sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F34 F35 H63 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2013-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-ppm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iob:wpaper:2013001

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