Press Release from the U.S. Depart­ment of the Trea­sury

http://www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/tfg537.htm

The U.S. Depart­ment of the Trea­sury today announced the United States will work with its part­ners around the world to relieve all debts owed by Haiti to inter­na­tional insti­tu­tions and to ensure grant financ­ing to sup­port Haiti’s recon­struc­tion and recov­ery from the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake in January.

“The earth­quake in Haiti was a cat­a­strophic set­back to the Hait­ian peo­ple who are now fac­ing tremen­dous emer­gency human­i­tar­ian and recon­struc­tion needs, and meet­ing Haiti’s financ­ing needs will require a mas­sive mul­ti­lat­eral effort,” said Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Tim Gei­th­ner. “Today, we are voic­ing our sup­port for what Haiti needs and deserves – com­pre­hen­sive mul­ti­lat­eral debt relief.”

Sec­re­tary Gei­th­ner also wel­comed Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s call to pro­vide full relief for Haiti’s out­stand­ing IMF debt, includ­ing the $102 mil­lion emer­gency loan approved on Jan­u­ary 27, 2010.

“We are com­mit­ted to work­ing quickly and closely with these insti­tu­tions in a way that pro­vides imme­di­ate grant assis­tance to help the Hait­ian peo­ple recover and rebuild,” Sec­re­tary Gei­th­ner con­tin­ued. “I very much wel­come the ini­tia­tive taken on this issue by lead­ers in Con­gress, the IMF, and the MDBs and look for­ward to work­ing with them to pro­vide the crit­i­cal sup­port Haiti needs for recov­ery as well as to dis­cussing this issue with my G-7 col­leagues this weekend.”

Trea­sury announced that the U.S. intends to seek a com­mit­ment with other donors for the relief of Haiti’s debt to the Inter-American Devel­op­ment Bank (IDB), the Inter­na­tional Fund for Agri­cul­tural Devel­op­ment (IFAD) and the Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment Asso­ci­a­tion (IDA) in a man­ner that pro­vides direct and imme­di­ate grant sup­port to Haiti.

In Sep­tem­ber 2009, the U.S. con­cluded an agree­ment with Haiti that elim­i­nated 100 per­cent of the Hait­ian Government’s out­stand­ing debt to the U.S. This action was taken fol­low­ing Haiti’s suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the Heav­ily Indebted Poor Coun­try (HIPC) Ini­tia­tive process in June 2009.