Asso­ci­ated Press

PARIS — The IMF says it has can­celed Haiti’s $268 mil­lion debt and will lend the earthquake-devastated coun­try another $60 mil­lion to help it with recon­struc­tion plans.

The Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund said Wednes­day the deci­sion is part of a plan for long-term recon­struc­tion after the Jan. 12 magnitude-7 quake, which killed as many as 300,000 people.

The three-year loan car­ries a zero inter­est rate until 2011 which then rises to no more than 0.5 percent.

The Washington-based fund says its moves should encour­age aid con­tri­bu­tions to the impov­er­ished country.

“Donors must start deliv­er­ing on their promises to Haiti quickly, so recon­struc­tion can be accel­er­ated, liv­ing stan­dards quickly improved and social ten­sions soothed,” IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in a statement.

In Haiti more than six months after the quake, rub­ble and col­lapsed build­ings still dom­i­nate the landscape.

The num­ber of peo­ple in relief camps has nearly dou­bled to 1.6 mil­lion, while the amount of tran­si­tional hous­ing built is minus­cule. Crime is more preva­lent since the quake, with attacks in camps ter­ror­iz­ing thou­sands, espe­cially women and girls.

Most of the $3.1 bil­lion pledged for human­i­tar­ian aid has paid for field hos­pi­tals, plas­tic tarps, ban­dages, and food, plus salaries, trans­porta­tion and upkeep of relief workers.

At a March con­fer­ence, donors pledged a total of $9.9 bil­lion — money that is sep­a­rate from the human­i­tar­ian aid — to help Haiti recover.

But less than 2 per­cent of it has been deliv­ered. The rest is mired in bureau­cracy and pol­i­tics of the more than 60 coun­tries and orga­ni­za­tions that pledged to help.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j9JEpiuNr2naxLKUtP4c1n3TfxYwD9H40SNO0