Reuters

The World Bank said on Fri­day it has writ­ten off $36 mil­lion of Haiti’s remain­ing debts to the lender with the help of con­tri­bu­tions from 13 countries.

With the deci­sion, Haiti has noth­ing fur­ther to pay to the World Bank, the insti­tu­tion said. The debt was owed to the World Bank’s fund for its poor­est bor­row­ers, the Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment Asso­ci­a­tion, or IDA.

Can­cel­ing the debt will free up funds — which would have been spent on ser­vic­ing the IDA debt — for rebuild­ing after Haiti’s dev­as­tat­ing Jan. 12 earthquake.

The Bank said fund­ing to write off the debt was received from Bel­gium, Canada, Fin­land, France, Ger­many, Ire­land, Italy, Japan, the Nether­lands, Nor­way, Spain, Swe­den and Switzerland.

“Reliev­ing Haiti’s remain­ing debt is part of our effort to pur­sue every avenue to help Haiti’s recon­struc­tion efforts,” World Bank Pres­i­dent Robert Zoel­lick said.

Since the earth­quake, the World Bank has com­mit­ted $479 mil­lion in grants for Haiti’s recov­ery through June 2011. It is also super­vis­ing an inter­na­tional donor fund for Haiti through which con­tri­bu­tions will be funneled.

Global insti­tu­tions like the World Bank and the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund last year wrote off $1.2 bil­lion of Haiti’s debts. (Report­ing by Les­ley Wroughton; edit­ing by James Dal­gleish and Jef­frey Benkoe)

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2818522520100528?type=marketsNews