By Shih Hsiu-chuan and Mo Yan-chih, Staff Reporters Taipei Times

REPRIEVE: A min­is­ter said Tai­wan could not fully can­cel Haiti’s debts given the nature of the loans, offer­ing instead to take over its inter­est pay­ments for five years

Min­is­ter of For­eign Affairs Tim­o­thy Yang (楊進添) yes­ter­day unveiled Taiwan’s debt reduc­tion plan for Haiti, with the Tai­wanese gov­ern­ment shoul­der­ing inter­est pay­ments to local banks for five years as the Caribbean coun­try strug­gles to recover from a dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake in January.

Yang told law­mak­ers in March that Haiti owed Tai­wan, one of its major lenders, US$88 million.

Haiti’s total for­eign debt was esti­mated at US$1 bil­lion before the fatal quake. As the debt-ridden coun­try tries to recover from the dis­as­ter, some of its major lenders — includ­ing Venezuela and the G7 (Canada, the US, the UK, France, Ger­many, Italy and Japan) — agreed to can­cel all of its debts.

Amid calls from the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity for Tai­wan to can­cel Haiti’s debts, Yan said the debt repay­ment plan was the “max­i­mum amount” that Tai­wan could “afford.”

“We have told Hait­ian gov­ern­ment about the plan and the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment expressed its appre­ci­a­tion, say­ing the plan could sub­stan­tially help it rebuild the coun­try,” Yang said.

The five-year period starts this year, dur­ing which Haiti will be exempted from repay­ing any inter­est pay­ments and prin­ci­pal to Tai­wan. The gov­ern­ment will take over the inter­est pay­ments dur­ing this period, which are esti­mated at US$12 mil­lion to US$13 million.

The gov­ern­ment and Port-au-Prince will dis­cuss a debt repay­ment plan after the five-year period.

Yang said Tai­wan could not can­cel the whole loan owed by Haiti as other lenders did, because the nature and struc­ture of the loan were dif­fer­ent from other countries’.

The money lent to Haiti was taken from the nation’s for­eign reserves via lend­ing con­tracts with two com­mer­cial banks instead of directly from the trea­sury. The gov­ern­ment could not write off the prin­ci­pal and could only take over pay­ment of the inter­est, he added.

In related news, Pres­i­dent Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yes­ter­day met with a del­e­ga­tion head­ing to the Domini­can Repub­lic for a forum on Haiti post-quake recon­struc­tion work.

The del­e­ga­tion, led by Coun­cil of Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Chen Wu-hsiung (陳武雄), will leave on Mon­day to par­tic­i­pate in the forum orga­nized by the UN on Wednes­day to dis­cuss post-quake relief and recon­struc­tion work in Haiti.

“It’s not easy for us to par­tic­i­pate in this inter­na­tional meet­ing because the UN is involved,” Ma said at the Pres­i­den­tial Office. “We’ve stressed the legit­i­macy of the inter­na­tional works we par­tic­i­pated in. It’s impor­tant for us to do this to improve our rep­u­ta­tion. We want to make Tai­wan both a respon­si­ble and respectable nation in the world.”

http://taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2010/05/29/2003474132